Are the Thunder breaking the NBA?
The Athletic NBA Daily
The Athletic
4.1 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni react to the New Orleans Pelicans five game winning streak. Then, Andrew Schlecht joins the show to discuss the Thunder's latest win, their rivalry with the Spurs, and whether the rest of the league can hope to compete.
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Host: Dave DuFour
With: Es Baraheni and Andrew Schlecht
Executive Producer: Andrew Schlecht
Audio/Video Producer: Alex Oliver
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for December 23rd, 2025. |
| 0:12.6 | I'm Dave Dufour here with S. Barahenny. |
| 0:14.6 | Coming up, the Pelicans are hot. |
| 0:16.6 | They just won their fifth straight. |
| 0:17.8 | We're going to talk about that. |
| 0:19.0 | And Andrew Schleck is here to talk about the Thunder after their latest win and whether or not they're breaking the NBA. |
| 0:29.8 | Good morning, everybody. |
| 0:31.4 | What's up, S? |
| 0:32.8 | Good morning. |
| 0:34.1 | Spoiler alert. |
| 0:35.3 | Yes, they are breaking the NBA. |
| 0:56.8 | Yes. Okay. It's not so much they're breaking it as they've broken it because they're better than everyone and they own all of the draft picks. Yes. Spoiler for the end of the show. Absolutely. Hey, speaking of spoiler, how about these pelicans, man? Plain spoiling. Yeah, a little bit, right like we we wrote them off they make a coaching change and all of a sudden things are a little bit different zion's been back out |
| 1:02.1 | there they pick up another win their fifth straight they they beat the mavericks who've been playing |
| 1:07.2 | a better basketball by the way with anth Anthony Davis and Cooper Flagg out there. |
| 1:14.4 | Zion, like I said, Zion's been coming off the bench for this team here lately. |
| 1:19.1 | S, what have you noticed about the Pels in this turnaround? |
| 1:21.3 | Like, I mean, it's more than just a vibe shift. |
| 1:25.4 | It's a shift of personality on there. |
| 1:30.0 | I think the number one change is one, Derek Queen is the franchise. |
| 1:36.1 | He is our starting center for the rest of the year. And I think that was a decision James Briego made very, very quickly. This is his team. We're rolling with it. We've drafted this guy. |
| 1:41.4 | We're entrusting this guy. And the same thing applies to Jeremiah Fears, who is just downhill gravity. He's our starting point guard. Let's go with that. Now you have these two guys off of the bench who, if you think of them as bench players, you're like, oh, wow, this is a really talented team now. Jordan Poole, Zion Williamson, two guys who can light it up offensively, I think those two as bench guys, especially Zion, you know, you think of Zion as a guy |
| 2:04.5 | who 25 minutes a night gives him that range where he can stay healthy, hopefully play |
... |
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