The Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder delivered a game of the year candidate as the two best teams in the NBA met for the first time. Dave DuFour, Es Baraheni, and Andrew Schlecht discuss Cleveland’s gameplan, what went wrong for the Thunder, and who has the clearest path to the Finals. Then, Es and Dave take a look at how Giannis manhandled Victor Wembanyama, the Bucks lineup change, and Paolo Banchero’s upcoming return.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni & Andrew SchlechtExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodySubmit your questions to The Athletic NBA Daily mailbag: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5939460/2024/11/25/nba-podcast-mailbag-athletic-daily/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for January 9th, 2025. Coming up, the Cavs ended the Oklahoma City Thunders 15 game winning streak. So we got Andrew Schleck to talk about it. Wemby and Giannis based off. So we're going to talk about that, of course. And Paolo might be coming back for Orlando. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, guys. How's it going?
A little bit of we had like a Super Bowl last.
Oh, my God. Game of the year. Game of the year.
Yes. You know, I got to say, Andrew Schlecht, Espera Henning, as I just jump right in because I'm too excited. The game had a very heavyweight feel to it, and it was nice. I loved that the officials let these guys play. Andrew, what about you? Just just your reaction to how the game felt like before you even talk about the game itself.
Yeah, for all the hand-wringing that's happened this season about style of play, whether the NBA is a good product or not, this is a great advertisement for the league to show all the general public because this was a great basketball game. Even though it was a high-scoring game, I thought the defense was superb from both teams. I thought the shot-making was just a little bit better.
I thought it was physical. I thought there weren't too many threes. The possession battle was incredible, which is something that I always look for in every Thunder game. Both teams shot 90 shots. I mean, it was just a battle of two very good basketball teams that play the right way, that play great defense. This is it.
If you love basketball, you will have loved this game between the Thunder and Cavs.
And as you know, we were talking a little bit about about this game after the game. And, you know, the Cavs win 129, 122. It's the most points that the Thunder have given up this year. We were we were talking about just like it worked out that Cleveland actually won this game. And, you know, shout out to Joe Varden. He called this their last test.
They passed it with an A. I think it worked out great for them. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the other thing about this, and by the way, I want to say I apologize to the Cleveland Cavaliers because I have been pushing the, hey, we'll see what happens. We'll see what the regular season looks like. We'll see how they're supposed to look against a really good team.
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