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

Show.

I am Jared Weiss.

I'm joined by Mo DeKill as always.

Don't forget that you can find the Daily Ding on the Athletic NBA show every

weekday morning.

We are recapping the best games from the night before, digging into them.

And, Mo, we had two incredible ones.

We're going to start with Phoenix holding off Golden State.

They win 104 to 96 at home.

17 straight wins for them.

Just before we jump in, Jared, we got to talk. The night lived up to the hype. You know, this is something we've been hoping for for a while, right? Like, everybody's kind of had this game pegged on the calendar. We're like, finally these two teams are going to meet. And, you know, it lived up to the hype. It was a hell of a game. And the Phoenix Sun's defense, Jared, was unbelievable all night long.

I mean, Mikhail Bridges really was just all over Steph Curry the entire night.

But it wasn't just that.

It was smart plays where guys would rotate were in the right spots.

You had DeAndre Aiton in one possession guarding curry in space like

when he switches on to him curry tries to get the ball to draymond green and bridges is there to poke it away

and force another turnover they were just outstanding defensively for the phoenix suns tonight it was an

unbelievable performance just on that end alone i was really impressed with how they played i mean, this Warriors team, they're going to get a little congested and then they're going to kind of fly out of that congestion. And it's hard to make that work when you have a Phoenix team that is as disciplined defensively and as long defensively as they are. You know, guys like McHale Bridges that are basically teradactals on the ground. Jay Crowder, obviously, is smart jumping into those lanes. You know, they were just, it looked like Golden State just couldn't move the ball the way they have been against so many other teams this year. It was really impressive. And this is part of the model. Another guy we should mention, too, is Cam Johnson, another long, you know, lanky defender that can really just kind of make it difficult.

And look, the Warriors were forced into 23 turnovers for 19 points for the Suns.

That's massive.

You know, when you're giving away that many possessions, you're really just going to have a hard time winning games.

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