Good morning. Welcome to the Daily Ding. Happy Wednesday. I'm your host, Dave DeFord, joining me today. I got Black Trey. What's up, Trey? What up? I got Vince Goodwill from Yahoo. What's up, Vince? Hey, what's going on, y'all? And we got Rob Lopez directing all the action silently.

Coming up on the show, the sun may be setting on Trevor Rees' time in Phoenix, and the Bulls are still a mess.

But first, the game of the night, the Portland Trailblazers continue to stink.

Losing to the Houston Rockets 11 to 103.

Chris Paul with a, I don't know if we want to call it depressing, but not a great triple

double, two of 12 from the field, 11 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, but he was actually

pretty effective tonight.

Trey, you and I have already talked about Chris Paul and how he may be washed.

He looked pretty spry tonight, especially around the basket.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm out on calling people washed.

At this point, I think, you know, everyone has the struggles,

and, you know, Houston is still trying to figure out what they're going to do

in the next month or so.

But Chris Paul still being able to, you know, triple doubles are not that easy.

You know, we've normalized it because Russell Westbrook and other guys have made it seem like it's a simple, you know, simple task.

But, you know, it's still effective.

And, you know, the Rockets still managed to figure it out against a good Portland team that that is struggling on the road.

Their bench didn't show up as well, but the Rockets bench was very good tonight.

Yeah, the Rockets still not quite good, but at least they did snap that three-game losing streak.

They are now tied for second to last in the West. James Harden with 29 points. Eric Gordon moved to the starting lineup. Still can't shoot. He was 6 and 13 tonight. 0 of 5 from 3, scored 14 points. Vince, what have you seen out of Eric Gordon this year? Do you feel like this is him being tentative? Is he just, I mean, is this just a slump? I mean, we're now a quarter of the way through the season. I think sometimes when the guy just loses it, he loses it. Like I saw him last month like around Thanksgiving. And I was asking people around the Rock is like, hey, is this guy healthy? We know he's having, you know, he's had issues throughout his career. They're like, no, he's as healthy as he's ever been. And you can see he's sort of having trouble finishing around the basket. The jumper that used to be wet isn't so wet anymore. I wonder if this is all just a byproduct of Chris Paul being washed. Like I was going to come on here with the hot take and say,

maybe Chris Paul is done, but y'all have already explored that.

Like, maybe that's the byproduct of all of this.

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