Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily Ding here on the Athletic NBA

NBA show.

My name is Jared Weiss.

I'm joined by Mo DeKeele, as we always do it here on Friday mornings.

Don't forget, you can find the daily ding on the athletic

NBA show feed and you can find us talking about kevin durant pretty much every episode because

he's been unbelievable this year he was unbelievable again thursday night the nets they beat the sixers

114 to 105 and another beautiful game from kd he was was unbelievable. I mean, the way he plays,

first off, it's not fair, Jared. He's a freaking cheat code. Like, he comes off. He hits some of the

toughest shots against some of the toughest defense. And the problem is, it just looks easy.

It's got to be disheartening to have to defend him. It didn't matter who the Sixers put on him.

He was just drilling tough shots after tough shots. Tobias Harris would give a good contest. Doesn't matter. Katie's rising up. Matisse Diabelle would be chasing him all over the place. Doesn't matter. He's still drilling and rising up. Like he was awesome, basically in every facet of the game. I was pretty impressed with not just his

score and finished with 34 points and 11 rebounds, but at eight assists. Like he was

diamonded out too. Like it becomes very difficult to guard him. No James Hardin. Still,

the offense is flowing nicely. And, you know, KD, like the playmaking is great. So good off the

bounds. So good from the high post.

But just the way that he was scoring right over Joel and Bid and crunch time, just driving right on him and just pulling up on like a little fade away from the paint that Joel and B would just smother that shot with anybody else in basketball, but obviously it's KD. Yeah, I mean, that's just kind of what makes him special. We all know. This is nothing else we could really say.

Like, you know, he, he is playing at an MVP level early in the season. It's December. But right now, he's playing at an MVP level. And, you know, can't really blame him. You're hearing the chance in Brooklyn, man. They're calling for it. Yeah, I mean, when he's coming down the floor, Danny Green's right on him.

He just, you know, flings it right in his face anyway to make it a four point lead halfway through the fourth quarter. That's what I love about this game is this is one of those games where, you know, if they gave Katie single coverage and crunch time, he was shooting over everybody. They tried blitzing and trapping him up top. I mean, they were, sometimes they were sending those traps like right up at half court. He would just slip it through to Blake Griffin and Blake Griffin would make the play on the short role. You and I were just talking the other night about how good Blake Griffin has been kind of coming back into the rotation. But Katie is just in that MVP rhythm right now where no defense is really affecting him. The thing is the end result is you still want to get the ball out of his hands. You know, and I understand the double teaming afterwards and just hoping it works out after that. The Sixers tie the game at 103 and then the Nets just go on a 7-0 run. Like, it's just tough, you know, after that it becomes a problem. And they kind of just buried the game from there.

Like, it's, it's hard. But Jared, we got to talk about Sixers. This is going to be a fun

conversation, right? No. This is, this is the second night of a back to back. No, Tyrese

maxi. I understand that. Guess what? The Nets have basically nobody except, you know, like they are missing so many guys. They're pulling up guys on the hardship stuff, 10-day hardship exceptions picking up just anybody they possibly can. Yeah, Langston Galloway. Like whoever they can find. Like, hey, you're healthy. You don't have COVID? Come on, get in. And that's pretty much what they're doing. And the sixers,

...