Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily presented by Amazon Prime for February 9th, 2026. I'm Dave DeFore. Here with Zena Kata coming up. The Rockets barely beat the Thunder without their two best players. We're going to talk about that. Egregious tanking in Utah. We're going to hit that and what we're watching after the trade deadline. Good morning, everybody. What's up, Zena?
Good to see you.
Good to see you. How have you done since the trade deadline?
You know, it took a little bit to recover after the seven hours of live streaming over on YouTube. Thanks to everybody who hung out. Shout out to the Discord. By the way, they were there was multiple people that were on the stream all day long.
Chapter 2: What happened in the Rockets vs. Thunder game?
It makes me question, like, what do you guys do for work? It seems like you got a good job out there, you know, but really, really appreciate everybody hanging out. Had a good time. And then I got the chance to do the athletic show with Xena the following day.
Chapter 3: Why is there egregious tanking happening in Utah?
So everybody go and check that out. The athletic show has its own YouTube channel and you can see it on Amazon Fire. Zeno, there's a lot happening. This has been kind of a crazy weekend. We got a lot of new faces and new places, but we're going to start with the Houston Rockets struggling to beat the shorthanded Thunder. They wind up winning 112-106, but it was not as easy as it should have been.
Now, Zena, I want to ask, if you're the Rockets, are you worried, or do you just tip your cap and you say, wow, the Thunder are just so deep?
No, I'm absolutely worried. You have Kevin Durant. You have Alperen Changoon. You've got a healthy Houston Rockets squad who, by the way, just told the entire league, we're good with this squad. We feel very confident going into the trade deadline that we've got exactly the pieces we need in order to make some noise in the West.
And you're going up against a Shea-less, a Jalen William-less OKC team, and Kaysen Wallace is doing y'all dirty.
Yeah.
He looked great.
He looked amazing.
But I kept thinking, you know, what if the Rockets had case on Wallace?
Right.
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Chapter 4: How did James Harden perform in his Cavs debut?
We've seen him default to Brandon Miller, to Khan Knipple, to put the last shots up. He has put up, he's set up his teammates in order to try to win games. And so I just love to see These guys right now are battling together for respect in this league and to win games and to have fun while doing it. And you got to give a lot of credit to Charles Lee for that.
But you also have to give a lot of credit and Musa Diabate.
And Musa Diabate.
Love him. But I just love to see that these guys are really locked in on playing for each other. And that is something that I think OKC has modeled and exemplified really, really well for the last few years as they came up on their Yeah. Charlotte's... I mean, we're having fun. We are having fun. I just don't want this to become... The Sacramento Kings light the beam team.
I need this to continue.
I don't think that they're going to make the free agent money mistakes or the trade mistakes. This feels like this group is going to take their time to put a team together. Again, you watch the Wizards and what they're doing right now. I think that the Charlotte team could eventually do that. But the starting lineup is pretty young.
Like they've got five, well, four guys really that are extremely young and talented that you can just build around. I don't know if they're going to have to go. the Wizards route where they try to rehabilitate pieces. They may add a piece at some point, but I don't think that they're going to be in a rush. Zeno, what are you paying attention to after the deadline?
I mean, we've talked about a few of them, the new faces in new places, right? James Harden, Jaron Jackson Jr. I'm still waiting for that Jalen Johnson, Jonathan Kaminga situation. I really want to know what that's going to plan out to. I think everyone in the Bay is looking for that. And then also when Steph comes back and Kristaps Verzingis is available, what does that look like?
So I think I'm a little bit biased towards the Warriors angle a little bit being out here in the Bay. I'm also wondering what teams are going to try and break through in the East. Because as you just mentioned, you know, Charlotte having this nine-game win streak, you're like, hold up, what's going on here? I'm looking at New York Knicks having that terrible loss against Detroit, 118-80. 80. 80.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of Harden's fit with the Cavs?
And Jalen Brunson was available for this game, guys, just in case you didn't know. Played 31 minutes in this game, scored 12 points. I understand that Detroit is incredibly good at defense, don't get me wrong, but keeping the Knicks, an offensive, or supposedly, you know, offensive power team, to 80 points, I feel like the East continues to be wide open.
And Boston just continues to kind of sit there. Detroit's considering to, you know, you know, continue to sit there. So I'm curious as to what's going to happen in the East in terms of what teams are going to try and break through the ranks.
One last thing. I'll swing it to the West for this one. The Minnesota Timberwolves. We keep saying they are confusing team. This is now like the third season in a row. We've said this confusing team. They lost the game to the Pelicans. That is just, again, the Pelicans are not tanking on purpose. They're just bad. There's no excuse for this for a team like the Timberwolves, period.
They are 5-5 in their last 10. 13th in offense. And this is the worst part to me, Zena. 12th in defense.
Just like we just talked about New York's supposedly being this offensive power team. Minnesota's supposed to have defense on lock. That is supposed to be their bread and butter. So you've got this 14-win team in New Orleans getting a win over Minnesota. I understand why Rudy kind of lost it and talked about accountability being necessary for this team.
And he was saying in an article with John Krasinski on The Athletic right now, go read it if you like, that it wasn't just about the basketball aspect of things. Mistakes are going to be made. I'm paraphrasing, but he's talking about effort.
straight effort and we've been hearing a few teams talk about effort especially in these months right leading up to the all-star break uh talking about people losing their jobs people being moved effort comes to mind a lot of how much do you really want this and i understand it is the few games right before the all-star break so you feel like maybe people are taking a a seat or trying to coast a little bit a little bit exactly
But Minnesota doesn't have the room to coast in the Western Conference. They've got to bring it every night.
I mean, this should be a home court team. In the West, in my opinion. Right now, they're only a game back on the Lakers and the Rockets. They're two games back on the Nuggets. The sky is not falling, but it doesn't look good. This is a team that should just be hammering teams like the Pelicans every single time they play them. They are 20-8 against teams under 500, 12-13 against teams over 500.
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