Good afternoon and welcome to Locked on NBA and happy opening night to the 2025-26 NBA season.

We've got Rockets Thunder. We've got Warriors Lakers.

What a way to kick off the season.

We're going to be telling you everything you need to know about both matchups.

Plus, we make some bold predictions.

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Hello and welcome back to Lockdown NBA.

However, you're tuning in on YouTube or on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for making us your first listen every day. I'm Wes Goldberg. Today we're talking about opening Night Rockets Thunder, Lakers Warriors. We're going to break down the matchups of both games with the help of lockdown's local experts. I have two of the best with me as always from the Lockdown Nuggets podcast. He's a senior NBA writer for the Action Network. It's Matt. Dan, da, da, da, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. From lockdown bulls podcast, Bulls and bears creator for bleach report, it's Hayes. I don't know if I've been this excited about the start of a season for a long time. And Matt just doing the NBA on NBC thing just reminded me. That's probably a big reason why. Like, this is a very nostalgic season for me. And I also have Modis Boozellis to actually be excited about it as a Bulls fan too. Things are looking up around it.

We're leaning into nostalgia a little bit. We've got like the Jersey Day, a lot of teams leaning into their throwbacks. We had the old Minnesota Timberwolves jersey, the old Utah Jazz jersey is coming back. A lot of good things happening to start the season. So we're hyped. We're going to preview tonight's marquee games to open the season in a second. but let's start with some predictions for this season that we're also excited about.

I want to get your predictions for who's going to win the championship. We'll get to some end of season award predictions. And then I want one bold prediction from each of you. But let's start with the reason why we do all of this. Who's going to win the championship? Hayes, who do you got?

I figured not to stray too far off in this one.

I still have the OKC Thunder winning the championship here.

They're so good, so young.

There's still players that still have a lot of development that they still can do in their

NBA career that are here.

And so we haven't had a repeat champion in a while. I'm still picking the OKC Thunder to repeat. Boring. It is. Wait until you get to my other predictions, though, Matt. Boring. I mean, look, Hayes is right. Like, if you're making a prediction, you have to predict the thunder. If you're just like, well, I want to give you the most accurate answer, the most likely outcome.

It's the thunder. If you're just like, well, I want to give you the most accurate answer, the most likely outcome. It's the thunder. But I'm not going to do that because that's no fun. I am not a homer because I am not from Denver, nor am I a Denver fan, but I am going to take the Denver Nuggets. I do locked on Nuggets. I am going to take the Denver Nuggets.

Look, they pushed the Thunder to 7 last year.

They clearly have problems with the kind of personnel that the Nuggets present, and they have a much better team. They have a deeper roster. They are reinvigorated. I've seen enough out of this team in preseason in terms of their attitude approach and how they view this season. I think they're well positioned.

I think repeating is very hard in the NBA.

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