Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily, presented by Amazon Prime for March 2nd,

2026.

I'm Dave Dufour.

Here is Zena Keda and S. Beraheni coming up, six weeks left in the regular season.

We're going to check in on the playoff races in the Western Conference in the Eastern Conference after a weekend of big games.

Good morning, everybody.

What's up, guys?

I'm happy to be back. Yeah. After you just did that intro, I'm happy you're back to. My God. Amen. I struggled to do those things. I agree. Hey, I just got to say, first, off the top, thank you guys for doing such a great job piloting the ship last week i didn't watch any basketball games it was

great but i still know what was happening in the league because i listened to the show every morning

i had to do it you know it's part of the job but also and you guys were great it was a lot of fun law

murray talking about power rankings oh yeah accompanied me on on a very nice hike and I was like very intrigued by his entire

process. So if you're listening or if you're watching on YouTube, great time to like,

subscribe, leave a five-star review because it was on my mind. I don't think I'm allowed to do it

ethically. It's kind of like voting for yourself. It's a little bit lame. So, you know, if a few hundred people were to do that, that'd be fantastic. There you go. Anyway, guys. Casually hundred. My first weekend back, and we get marquee matchups all weekend long. I mean, it started Friday where we had short-handed calves, sure, got a great game with

calves and pistons. I mean, the Rockets losing to the heat is going to come up. But I thought that after

all these big games and looking ahead at the schedule, we now have six weeks left until we get to

the playoffs. It's all about the playoffs right now. So I thought it was a good time to check in on where we're at.

And as we're recording, look, the Oklahoma City Thunder are sitting exactly where they've been in the Western Conference there at number one. They've been there all year. And, you know, the Spurs just had this 11 game win streak. So they were hot on their heels until they ran into the Knicks, which seems like the Knicks are the one team that's giving the Spurs some trouble right now this season, guys.

Which is so strange, just considering the matchup and what the Knicks have allowed all season in terms of paint points.

And the Spurs are really good at getting into the paint.

Now, do we think that when Minyama could probably do more scoring in the paint? Absolutely. We always believe that. But, yeah, it just feels like the Knicks turn up the physicality when they go up against the spurs. Would you say that as? Yeah, I think so. And I also thought, like, the Knicks did a really good job of scoring in the paint against the Spurs, which is something a lot of teams have struggled to do against Victor Wambayama and the Spurs. One of it is like the Spurs have such a great point of attack defense with their kind of three-headed monster, if you will. But at the same time, they have that backline defense of Victor Wemjama that just cleans up everything that they do.

So the fact that the Knicks were able to score on the paint, to your point, shows a level of

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