Do the Rockets pass the eye test?
The Athletic NBA Daily
The Athletic
4.1 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni react to the Thunder dropping the Rockets, the lack of easy offense for Houston, and where the Bucks go after another blowout loss. Then, Joe Vardon joins the show from Berlin where Franz Wagner returned and delivered a Magic win and Anthony Black dunked on the world.
Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/eme2tPcUM2
Host: Dave DuFour
With: Es Baraheni and Joe Vardon
Executive Producer: Andrew Schlecht
Audio/Video Producer: Alex Oliver
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Goodman Morgan, welcome into the NBA Daily, presented by Amazon Prime. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Dave Dufour here with Esperi. |
| 0:15.1 | Coming up, the NBA's in Berlin. |
| 0:17.4 | Our man Joe Varden was there. |
| 0:18.9 | We talked to him about the magic grizzly game. |
| 0:21.9 | The Thunder win another statement game over the Rockets. We got to talk about them. And the |
| 0:26.3 | bucks got embarrassed again by Wemby and the Spurs. Good morning, everybody. How's it going, |
| 0:34.1 | S? Good morning, Dave. I tried. I was going to jump the gun and do it ahead of you, but you got me, man. You got me. I mean, listen, this is, again, why I get the medium bucks around here. Sure. Yeah. Listen, it was a pretty fun game in Berlin. The Magic wind up winning that game. I want to just talk about the anthony black dunk |
| 0:55.5 | with you we we talked about this with with joe varden but s this is one of the best |
| 1:00.8 | dungs i've ever seen yeah it really is it dumped on four guys it doesn't even make sense man |
| 1:06.8 | it really doesn't make sense that he dunked that ball. Like it should not have been possible. |
| 1:12.5 | You know, we watched something that just was not supposed to be possible happen. |
| 1:17.2 | And the crazy thing is I think that was what helped the magic win the game. |
| 1:21.6 | It was all tied. |
| 1:22.5 | And he had a dunk in a clutch moment. |
| 1:24.1 | It's always a little bit extra when that clutch, when that dunk happens at a |
| 1:27.8 | big moment like that, you know? Basketball is a momentum sport. It has the wild swings for that reason. |
| 1:34.3 | You know, this is why I hated when the Grizzlies were hot early on, the magic switch into |
| 1:38.8 | the zone. I thought that was a mistake. They were too hot. You have to actually pressure them |
| 1:42.4 | and get them to not shoot. Anyway, we went deep on that game with Joe after the break. But, hey, look, the Thunder and Rockets met up last night. This is back-to-back, big games for the Thunder. And once again, they step up and they show how dominant they can be. They win this game, 11 to 91. She gives uslexander another 20 point game where are we at now how many games is that in a row 12 or 113 from what the broadcasts were saying so he's in that range yeah he's a little over like he's in double digits i guess like 12 or 13 away from the record so obviously we'll be keeping an eye on that. But as I actually don't want to focus on the Thunder because the truth is the thunder, they won playing Thunder basketball. I want to focus on the Rockets because you've been telling me for the last few weeks that the Rockets are elite. All right. They're top 10 in offense, top 10 in defense. We know how good |
| 2:34.5 | the rebounding is. But every time I watch the Rockets, which is pretty much, you know, I watch a lot |
| 2:39.6 | of their games, I'll say, like, you know, four out of five of their games. I am astounded by the |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

