Chapter 1: What trends are emerging in the NBA this season?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for December 15th, 2025. I'm Dave DeFore. Coming up, I sat down for 30 minutes with Sam Amick, had him empty the notebook on everything he's hearing on trade season. Welcome to our trade season primer. Good morning, everybody. Hey, Sam, how are you? Good morning, Dave. Good to see you, my friend. Been a while. Yeah, not a busy time of year.
I mean, listen, you probably are busy all year. I guess you get August and that's about it.
Late July, August, and then we kind of ramp up into September. But this is certainly, it's funny, you keep running into random people in your life there. How are the holidays going?
Chapter 2: How is OKC performing compared to other teams?
And I enjoy the holiday season, but the first thought is always like, ah, it's pretty intense on the NBA front, but it's a good problem to have.
Yeah, trying to explain to people that I am super, super, super busy for the first like two and a half months. And then once we get to mid-January, I have a normal life. You know, I can start to, you know, I don't have to watch the Orlando Magic versus the Charlotte Hornets at 430 in the afternoon. You know what I mean? I can I can read about it after Sam. It's trade season, December 15th.
We're here finally. It seems like every single season this this date arrives sooner, you know, at least in our hearts, like. There's a bunch of guys that we feel like could be on the move. But before we get to that, I just want to start with your take on the season so far. We're like the quarter way mark. How do you feel about how the season's going?
Anything jumped out to you that that you've kind of. been drawn to, or are there any teams or players that stand out?
Chapter 3: What challenges are the Clippers facing this season?
I mean, there's a lot. I think just the, but man, the headline and the elephant in the room is just, you know, you talk about jumping out. Okay. See, jumping out the way that they have, you knew there were going to be, you know, the, the title front runners.
Again, you knew that common sense tells you they're going to be even better than before, you know, having that championship under their belt and the experience that comes with it. But to see what they've done without Jalen Williams for most of it, to be on pace to break the Warriors' regular season record for wins, it's just remarkable stuff.
And I know this is a little premature, but I feel like we're getting there. potentially to this space where in terms of the league wide ramifications, you know, it's, it's very fair to say, man, is this a dynasty in the making?
And that is the type of thing that, you know, the last time we lived through that was with the warriors and, and you see potentially this chilling effect on the rest of the NBA in terms of team building. And I know we're going to end up talking about trade stuff, but I wonder what, you know, impact that is having already on the way that all these different teams are thinking?
Because if you are kind of quietly giving up hope that you can actually catch the thunder, then does that change the timeline of your strategy? Does that change the way that you move? It would make sense for the answer to be yes, because they've just been that good.
How much are you hearing teams talk about the Thunder draft stockpile, right?
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of December 15th for NBA trades?
That's like the real weapon that they've got to extend this dynasty. Of course, they've got all these good young players and they continue to find them. I mean, A.J. Mitchell just looks like a star, actually. And he's on the cheapest contract in the league. But the draft picks. are the nightmare to me for everyone else.
I mean, Oklahoma City could legitimately wind up with the number one pick in next year's draft and be on the back of a back-to-back championship run. And I think, you know, That is a disaster a little bit for competitive balance in the league.
It is, but it's not. It's funny because that word, you know, or that phrase, Dave, competitive balance. Again, we heard that with the Warriors, right? When they got Kevin Durant, it was unfair. The free agency, you know, the cap spike that led to Kevin being able to sign with the Warriors.
Chapter 5: Who are the potential trade candidates this season?
That was an outlier. And that was where people, I think, had a reasonable argument to say, Well, this is, you know, unfair competitive balance. This is not that.
This is just incredible management by Sam Presti and his front office staff to a degree where they are really the only team in the NBA that, again, through their own merit, has a cheat code in relation to this current salary cap situation.
situation and the CBA and the way that the league works right now, everybody else is, you know, it picks her at a premium, having a hard time, you know, figuring out the aprons and the thunder, knowing that inevitably they will lose some of their, uh, if not their core guys and their role players because of the finances that they have this incredible, uh, you know, a hall of draft picks waiting in the, in the wing.
And like you said to the idea that I mean, you're talking about potentially three first-round picks with Clippers, Sixers, and Jazz next year coming their way, depending on how the standings fall. It's unfair, but again, this is not the type of unfair where they got gifted anything. They did this.
Yeah, it's not like baseball, right? They're going out outspending someone or something like that. They just planned ahead. Look, you mentioned the chilling effect. And I want to go back to that because I'm curious how that's going to affect the player movement and especially for veterans.
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Chapter 6: What is the market outlook for Giannis Antetokounmpo?
You know, you hear about Dallas maybe wanting to move Anthony Davis, move Clay Thompson. But if teams are thinking we just are going to keep the powder dry and we're going to maybe hope that OKC runs into some bad luck or or whatever else. Is it going to mean that some of these teams that might want to pivot are stuck in their current situation?
Again, it might, you know, you can call it stuck or you can call it like extending their runway or their timeline. Dallas is a good example. In my backyard, I'll use the Kings as a good example.
I'm really curious to see what they do because if they felt closer to being competitive, then maybe they're willing to, you know, move one of their core guys, whether it's Tamada Sabonis or Zach Levine with a pick attached to get, you know, like Levine, for example, like he's very hard to move. Well, they have zero interest in attaching a pick because they need to think about their future.
And you have to like, again, you have to think about a longer timeline. I think a world exists where a player like that. And this example applies to a lot of teams where, all right, we have two high price years left. with this particular player? Are we going to be desperate to get him off our books and compromise some of our other kind of building tools in the process?
Or will we be very patient and just let him come off the books naturally after next season? Those are the types of questions that, to some degree, are impacted by the Thunder's dominance.
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Chapter 7: How does Anthony Davis's situation impact the trade market?
And it's not the case for everybody. I wrote this today.
shameless plug dave had a lot of fun doing our front office rankings at the athletic we do it every year it's the second time we've done it um and not surprisingly okc was at the top but i wrote about the rockets for example and how their legacy is interesting you know rafael stone their gm worked under daryl morey previously before daryl went to philly um and this rockets team
in this group is doing a similar thing to what they did a decade ago when they were one of the only teams that was actually coming for the neck, so to speak, of the reigning champion. And it was the the Warriors back then with the Rockets trying to take them off their throne. And now, you know, it's the Rockets going after the Thunder because, you know, they went out and got KD.
They'd been aggressive. So the chilling effect doesn't apply to everybody. But unless you are a Houston or a Denver or a New York team, or one of these teams near the top, you know, I think you start second guessing the strategy here a bit.
Yeah, and let's not forget that the Spurs have so much young talent and Victor Wiminyama that there's a chance that the Spurs maybe catch OKC to a certain degree. However, they can be caught. I don't even know what that looks like. By next year, these guys, they might have five stars in their starting lineup. They're just on another level.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of the Thunder's draft strategy?
Speaking of teams waiting for guys to come off the books, I got you here. We got to talk about the Clippers. It's fiasco after fiasco for this team. I mean, the season itself has just been a disaster, especially compared to the promise, I think, that they had coming out of last year. They pushed the Nuggets to seven games. The Nuggets pushed the Thunder to seven games.
You know, you start doing the math, right? And you say, hey, maybe we're a little bit better than we thought. But it turns out they outperformed the roster last year. But everyone is thinking about 2027. But what are the Clippers do now? You know, this this there's so much weirdness around the team. I mean, Lawrence Frank's getting an extension. It's it seems like.
Everything is the opposite of the way it should be going.
No, that's fair. I don't know how to break it down other than it is a disaster. Basketball-wise, they had high expectations for this year. Now, in the interest of not being hypocritical, because we get things wrong all the time in the media, I will share with you that, man, Dave, when the Clippers came through my neck of the woods in the preseason,
And it was preseason, but you can get a feel for teams and they put a beating on the Kings. You know, I looked at that roster and I was a believer. I thought they were going to be good. Um, and fast forward to, you know, obviously here in mid December and everything has come off the tracks. Certainly part of it is health related.
Kawhi was out for quite some time, but we, even once they got Kawhi back, um, it has not worked. Um, the Chris Paul, um, you know, situation, controversy, drama that I think exposed a lot of warts that we knew existed within the Clippers culture, but it just reminded you that they still exist.
And what I'm referring to there is you can say what you want about Chris's leadership style, but the lack of leadership and the void in that department is is I think the root issue of what led to, you know, what happened there.
And that, you know, you got a guy in Kauai who is, you know, obviously legendarily quiet and soft-spoken and certainly a like, I'm going to show you and not tell you type of leader, right? That's not the end of the world, but you put him next to James Harden, who has been lauded for a lot of things, has had a historic career, but has never been known as a leading the troops type of guy.
The thing that strikes me about the Clippers and confuses me It's just how they they just stubbornly stick to their plan, no matter the results. And, you know, you mentioned the reporting from our Joe Varden at the Athletic that that there's a lot of people around the league indicating that the Clippers front office is on track to get extensions.
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