How about we can just watch basketball?

How about we can just watch basketball?

Hello and welcome to The Daily Dang on The Athletic NBA show.

I'm Dave DeFore here with Keith Parrish for your Christmas Day recap.

Happy Monday, everybody. Before we start, don't forget if you haven't already subscribed,

go to Theathletic.com slash NBA show. Right now, you can get us for just $24 for the whole year.

That's right. Start your new year off right. Get those late Christmas presents in. Theathletic.com

slash NBA show. A lot of stuff to get to from Saturday. So we're going to jump right in with Warrior's Sons. And Keith, the Warriors, short-handed, missing a couple of starters with guys in health and safety protocols. And it did not slow them down. They had 116 to 107 victory in Phoenix. And I think we're going to start with

Steph Curry, but man, we could we could pick anyone on the roster here, Keith. Every

warrior kind of had a great game. It was a tremendous basketball game. It was a game. I assume

lots of you like me were watching with relatives. And I like, I felt like I needed to point out to people but I

withheld I needed to point out just how good both of these teams are. I was like guys this is

incredible basketball. I don't know if you understand. I know that like good job to the NBA for

putting such a marquee game on Christmas Day. These teams were fantastic. I don't think they knew both these teams would be this awesome. I mean, this is basically best case scenario for both these teams. I know they all had finals dreams, but they've come into fruition, it feels like. It's like them and the jazz are clearly the three best teams in the West. And like Sun's Warriors lived up for an amazing game on Christmas. As for like, yeah, you could compliment any number of the warriors. Yeah, it's, it's incredible what guys have done. You know, you say they're missing players, but that's just more opportunity for Gary Peyton too. That's just more opportunity for Otto Porter to, I guess, make Bulls and Wizards fans feel sad. Like, why didn't, why don't we get that Auto Porter? I mean, yeah, it was an amazing game. Steph Curry, even though his shooting wasn't like, you know, it wasn't great for him. Just the overwhelming defense of the Warriors and holding on a Sun's team that played again very, very well. Like, it was a delight of a basketball game for Christmas afternoon. Yeah, and the first half, the Suns did good job of punishing the warriors inside. The Sun's centers, Aiton and Javelle McGee were fantastic, and it was just tough for the Warriors, but the Warriors, they did what they do. They adjusted, they switched things up. And I thought some of the looks that they were thrown at Chris Paul and Devin Booker were fantastic. They were mixing up their coverages. And Keith, they kept Chris Paul out of the mid range. And I mean, he was only 7 to 14 in this game, but he wasn't drawing the defense. So only eight assists, you know, and that's normally when he's not getting to that spot, he's able to create for others a little bit more, and it wasn't necessarily the case in this one.

I mean, it just, it wasn't enough. Chris Paul didn't have enough basically, I don't want to say by himself, because the team, that team is so deep. Like, they're so fantastic. There was large stretches of this game where actually, I thought the sons were going to win. They took the punch from the Warriors, and then in that third quarter, like, they were pushing, they were coming on, they were making shots. Like, you have Cam Johnson who's been on this incredible run, you know, playing one when Devin Booker was out and now coming off the bench. She's still playing so well. Like, Cam Johnson and McHale Bridges, I would trust those two to do anything. Like, fix my house. I don't know. Like anything, those guys were working together. Like, I love the vibes they have together.

How well they played? I guess you could point to Devin Booker. Like, he had a not good game. If Chris Paul gives you 21 and 8 on this 7-14tham of the field, you'd think that's good enough looking at the rest of the roster and the stats they had. But Devin Booker, you know, like he had an underwhelming game. but I think like you said,

you give credit to the Warriors defense.

Draymond Green was possessed. Like, he was so good in this whole game. And that Warriors team, it doesn't matter who's out there. It's a system. It's just replaceable pieces. And, like, they're so good. It's so many facets of the game the game yeah and we got to call out again specifically auto michael jordan porter junior because the 19 points that he put up look

you look at that it kind of is whatever it's three or seven from three but the the little stretch

that he had to seal the game for the warriors that was fun he had a had a couple of tough fadeaway, mid-range jumpers, hit a couple of big threes. And, you know, this is the sort of guy that they have needed for a couple of years now. They've been missing that Sean Livingston, previously Andre Iguodala, guy who at full strength is going to be able to come off the bench and give him a high level of play. But I actually want to talk about his defense in this game because you mentioned

Draymond Green being possessed, but Draymond Green, Otto Porter and Gary Payton the second

defensively, I don't know if there's a trio in the league that's scarier when those guys are

...