Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for November 15th, 2024.

Coming up, we got Sam Amick to talk about the bucks and trying to figure things out,

and Denver's resurgence.

We got Carter Rodriguez from the Chase Down podcast to talk about the calves in their 13-0 start.

And Zena and I are going to take a look at some early season statistical trends and see if they're real or not.

Good morning, everybody.

Good morning, Zena.

Good morning, Sam Amick. We usually don't do this, but we're going to start the show with our guests because it's Sam. Sam, you know, you're basically part of the show at this point. Sam, our senior national NBA writer. How are you? Good, guys. Thanks for having me. Bless to be here. Yeah. You guys got to hang out the other night at Clay Night or Clay Day. I don't know how. Clay Day. Get it right. Clay Day, but it was at night. So, you know, this is like, Zina, I got into my driveway at 2.45 in the morning. That did not feel like Clay Day. You should have taken a boat. It was a whole thing. Exactly. But you guys got a chance to hang out and catch up. I got a chance to see Sam not too long ago. So, you know, we're all familiar with each other.

Sam, I want to talk about familiarity with the Bucks. This team has been together for a little while. They added Dame last year. Obviously, they changed coaches twice last season. We don't have to go through the entire history. This season's not started the way that they expected to. Number one, Chris Middleton's not been healthy. They've looked pretty old. They've

had a lot of rotation issues. Now Damian Lohler's been out for a few days with some concussion

issues. They have won two in a row. The second game took 59 points from Janus, and it took every single point and overtime

to beat the pistons.

What's going on with the bucks?

Listen, I mean, I hate to just kind of elephant in the room, but it's just not a very

workable model.

And this is what they thought was going to be a title contending team.

The Janice, Dame, Chris Middleton, Brooke Lopez, Bobby Portis, you know, going back to last

year, Adrian Griffin, formula has not worked.

The Middleton absence is big.

You know what I mean?

At his best, he's an important piece for them, an incredibly important piece.

But I always feel like qualifying that because, hey, like unfortunately for Chris, he's had

...