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Hello and welcome to the tampering podcast, part of the Athletic NBA Show Network.

I'm Sam Amick, NBA, National Writer at The Athletic, here with Anthony Slater out west.

Fred Katz out east.

We are here to present the first regular season,

2023, 2024,

Pod, gentlemen, it's real, it's happening.

We had action galore last night.

Two nights ago, Slater and I were chilling at Sun's Warriors.

Last night, Fred Katz was watching the Celtics and the Knicks do their thing. So much to keep up with. Wembe is real. Wembe is here. What's going on, boys? Can you imagine if Wembe wasn't real? All this anticipation? Not real. Yeah. Yeah, he's not real. It's a hologram the whole time. Eric Glybably is also real. Yes, that is true. That is true. All right, we're going to make the rounds today. It's one of those nights where I don't know how it was for you guys. It's definitely different than for me and we're going to get into that. But like when you go from the dog days of the summer to the, hey, the training camp

is starting. And then the preseason basketball that drags on and is such a sludge to get

through with so little entertaining hoops to watch. And then it's just fireworks. You know what I mean?

It's all over the place. You know, you can't have 12 TVs up at once.

So we're going to, again, make the rounds.

But, Fred, I am going to throw it to you because there's just nothing like covering NBA

basketball in person.

And among the three of us, you were the only one last night actually at a game.

Celtics have, you know, a hell of a follow-up act

...