Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily presented by Amazon Prime.

It's Thursday, February 26.

I'm Zena Keda, joined by Law Murray.

And coming up, the two number ones battled into the east,

and we're going to discuss how Detroit came out on top with Hunter Patterson.

The Celtics took a loss to the Nuggets, and according to Phil Jackson, that means something that we need to pay attention to.

And James Hardin, unfortunately, broke his hand, and is that going to be a make or break for the Cavs?

We're going to get all into it right now.

Law, what's up, my guy? Thanks going to get all into it right now. Law.

What's up, my guy? Thanks for joining me again on the NBA Daily. Yeah, thank you for having me

again. And this week, it feels like contenders week to end February. And I'm excited to discuss it.

Yeah. Okay. So contenders week, I'm happy you brought that up because for those of you that don't know,

Phil Jackson had this rule, this 40-20 rule when it comes to contention.

Law, break that down for us.

Yeah.

So Phil Jackson said that it takes a certain amount of games to figure out what teams are contenders and which teams are pretenders.

He established a line earlier in this 21st century that we're in, where if you win 40 games before you lose your 20th game, you are a bona feta contender for a championship

in that season. And let me tell you, the hit rate for this is high. Like, incredibly high.

18 of the last 19 NBA champions won their 40th game before they lost their 20th,

if they lost their 20th at all. Going to all the NBA champions, only 17 out of 29 teams,

sorry, 17 out of 79 teams in NBA history, haven have won the title without being a 40 before 20 team.

And only four of those teams have come in the three point line era that was established in 1979.

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