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Welcome to the NBA Daily Ding on The Athletic NBA Show.

Ding, ding!

How about we can just watch basketball?

I like that idea.

Hello, and welcome to the Daily Ding on The Athletic NBA show.

I'm Dave DeFour here with Mark Schindler for your Monday night update.

Before we start, don't forget, you can get this podcast without ads by subscribing at theathletic.com slash NBA show.

Big Monday night, we had a couple of marquee matchups, Mark, and we got to start the best team in

the east met the second seed in the west.

And the Sacramento Kings, they held their own, but they were not able to come away with

the win.

133, 124, the Bucks take the win in Sacramento. That's a huge road win for the Bucks because the Kings are really, really tough at home. Yeah, this was one of my favorite games I've watched since the All-Star break. I think there were a lot of really great things to take away from this. I was looking at this as a really important inflection point. Honestly, for both teams, you want to keep seeing the bucks building momentum, a good game to test and find their offense. Obviously, the Kings are not a great defensive team. But more importantly, I think when you look at this for the Kings, like the last time these two teams played, they got run off the court a little bit. They struggled to keep up. Their offense wasn't quite there. And I think they really found some things tonight. Yeah, absolutely. At one point in this game, the Kings led by as much as 15. They actually had a

lead for the majority of the first three quarters, Mark. And it did look like a different Kings team.

They clearly are a little bit more seasoned as a season goes on. And we knew that they were kind

of saving their best for last. That's what they try to do. Dearen Fox, you know, he wants to get going in the fourth. And for them in the fourth quarter in this game, it was Kevin Herger. He just went absolutely bonkers in the fourth quarter. Yeah, Kevin Herger was awesome tonight. Eight of 11 from three finished with 28 28 points. I tweet this out during the game,

but I just continue to be so impressed with what he does. Like, rightfully, everybody talks about

...