Chapter 1: What are the current trade rumors surrounding Ja Morant?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily presented by Amazon Prime for January 13th, 2026. I'm Dave DeFore here with Zena Keita and John Hollinger. Coming up, we're going deep with John Hollinger on John Morant trades, Michael Porter Jr. trades, rookies that he likes, everything. Stick around. Good morning, everybody. Hey, Zena. Hey, John Hollinger joining the show.
Thanks for hanging out with us. John's in Sacramento. You've been what? Stalking the Houston Rockets. What are you doing in Sacramento right now?
Just, you know, just just seeing if the if the Kings can manage to try to win and still be worse than all the teams that are tanking. I think it's a fascinating story. They actually they actually won one yesterday, but. Yeah, I did. No, no. Just sort of luck of the draw. I had a good back to back here with Houston, L.A. in town.
And it's actually a wonderful place to come to do this if it weren't for the team. Like, yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful arena. It tells me all the time how much you love Sacramento.
Great coffee here. Yeah. Yeah. You actually had a really good story at the Athletic yesterday about the Rockets and the way that they had to get to the arena. So what happened there? There were no rooms at the end. Is that the situation? What's going on in Sacramento that was preventing the Rockets from getting a hotel?
So basically, there's one hotel here where everyone tries to stay. It's the Sawyer, and it's connected to the arena. It's the nicest hotel. So when I worked with the Grizzlies, I kind of helped with a lot of our team travel. It was one of my jobs because everyone wears like 20 hats in an NBA front office. And so I know somehow the sausage gets made here. So basically, the Lakers are here.
We're already in the hotel because they're playing today. And the Knicks flew from Portland after their game yesterday afternoon to Sacramento because they want to get out of the rain, even though they don't play here until Wednesday. So kind of a quirk. They had three days off. We were just like, yeah, we're going to get the hell out of Portland and come down.
So I think they booked their hotels first. So then the Rockets didn't have any any room tonight. And so I don't know what blocked them. Two nights ago. I'm not sure because those teams weren't there then. But anyway, so they stayed in San Francisco the last two nights and they took a bus. You know, I mean... You guys know, I mean, it's 85 miles. Usually doesn't take 85 minutes, though.
So I'm not sure how long it took. I mean, it was a Sunday afternoon. Maybe it wasn't that bad, but they had to leave early and allow for all that. And they're just kind of get to the arena. They're at the end of a road trip already. They've played a title league record 23 of 36 on the road. Like they looked exhausted yesterday. And.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did the Houston Rockets face during their stay in Sacramento?
But alas, there are questions being had around the league, around a particular player in Tennessee. That is John Morant. We know that he's had some games out with that right calf contusion. But that's not really the question around him right now. The question really is about the trade rumors. the fielding offers. Um, you've talked a little bit about this. You've written about this.
What's the situation there? Lay out the scene.
Yeah. Uh, I think, I think it's, I think it's time. I think both parties realize it kind of like with the, with the Hawks and Trey young that we just had. Um, They part of the reason they traded Desmond Bain this past season is because they realized they weren't good enough with the jaw. Jaron Desmond core and that jaw wasn't reliable enough to be the main piece of a team like that.
So they wanted to get more assets, set themselves up either to draft that guy or trade for that guy. But part of the part of the reason to do that with Desmond Bain, who they loved and valued as a good culture guy and all that was that they Ja wasn't the guy and it looked like he was going to be, you know, that guy that you could build the whole team around.
And now it's more like, OK, he's going to be good, but he's going to be available for half the games and he's not really going to be a top 15 player in the league. So, yeah, what are you doing here? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So now they're I mean. Even as recently as I want to say this summer or something, Zach Kleiman was like, yeah, this is ridiculous. You know, this is fantasy.
We're not trading him. Yeah, totally changed his tune. Now it's like, OK, phone lines are open. So usually on the team side, you don't do that unless, you know, you have at least one fish on the hook. And. So and so you can see what else. And yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like the Hawks knew they had Washington in the red zone. So then they could say, OK, let's open this up. Let's canvas a lead.
Let's make sure we're not missing any other opportunities before we go ahead with this. I suspect that's kind of where the Grizzlies are. Yeah. We'll see. The part that's fun for me is that when you trade a player, you know, the new team is responsible for his travel arrangements. So I want to see a team have to fly him in from Berlin. That's right.
The Grizzlies just landed in Berlin yesterday. That's crazy. You know, I'm sure he well, he's going to want to stick around for the game in London. So, you know, I'm sure he can tag along.
Good club scene in London. That's all I'm saying.
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