Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily presented by Amazon Prime for January 5th, 2026.

I'm Dave DeFore here with Zina Keda and Esperi.

Coming up, we're going to talk about the Eastern Conference playoff race, which is very interesting right now and some teams that need to make some

trades before the deadline.

Good morning, everybody. Happy New Year. That's right.

I got me. I had the little thing yeah scot me for once that's

i like that i got you happy new year guys happy new welcome back what's up guys not as if we haven't

been talking to each other i was waiting until the right pause to be able to pull that off so i I'm glad it worked out. Perfectly executed. That was pretty amazing. Yeah. Good job. Did you guys have a fun little break? I know Zena, you definitely didn't have any days off. Yeah. Not a break, but it was nice to like chill for a little bit just to be able to watch. Yeah. In sports, it's like a break in quotation.

That's right. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Well, the nice thing is some of these, some of these days,

you know, we had games all day long. I mean, early games. I mean, I love it when a game starts

at 11 a.m. out here on the West Coast. I got a chance to really like like, sit and watch so much basketball without having to do shows

and to think about what was happening every single night.

And the Eastern Conference is pretty competitive right now.

And, you know, it's sneaky competitive because we've spent all this time and it feels

like our focus has been very much on the West. Obviously, the Thunder, they have this great start. Shea gives us Alexander's the MVP. You've got Yokic. You've got Wembe. You've got LeBron and Luca and the Rock. They have all this star power. And it feels like the East sort of battle that's happening right now has been going under a radar.

We have been talking about the Knicks, like they're the best team in the East guys.

And I just don't think I believe that right now.

I mean, after the two losses that they had, it opens up some room for skepticism.

I think that's fair.

The Hawks getting blown out at MSG and then losing in the way that they did.

I don't know. I agree with you that it's a bad stretch for the Knicks, but I still think they're the best team in the East, man.

I still think they're the best team. I disagree with you. I disagree with U.S. Okay. Let's hear it. I've been disagreeing with this like for a while now.

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