Rockets RETURN To National Spotlight | OKC Thunder Ring Ceremony SPOILER Alert?

Rockets RETURN To National Spotlight | OKC Thunder Ring Ceremony SPOILER Alert?

On today’s show, the NBA schedule leaks are out and the Houston Rockets are back in the national spotlight where they belong. Plus, we take a look at our most anticipated games of the season. It’s all coming up right here at Locked on Rockets. This is mission control Houston. Ignition sequence 5 6 5 4 3 2 1. What is up and welcome to another edition of Locked on Rockets, your daily podcast home for everything Houston Rockets basketball. As always, I’m your host Jackson Gatlin, native Houstononian and credentialed media member. I’m also the host of Locked on NBA Thursdays. Be sure to follow along wherever you listen to your podcast or on YouTube. Just search Locked on Rockets where the best way you can help us grow our show is to listen every single day on a podcast platform of your choosing and then like, comment, subscribe on YouTube. On today’s show, we’re getting into the schedule leaks for your Houston Rockets. Back in the national spotlight, playing on opening night of this brand new NBA season, as well as back on the Christmas Day slate, the first time back on the Christmas Day slate since 2019. It’s been a nice little six-year hiatus, but the Rockets are back in the national spotlight. Going to be a ton of fun this next year. Plus, we’ll take a look at the most anticipated games, matchups of this upcoming campaign, plus a little bit of information on what to expect from Rockets media day and training camp. The dates being revealed for those as well. We’ll get to all of that on today’s show. First, want to let you know that today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can get $150 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. Just head on over to fanduel.com to check them out. And as always, thanks so much for making Lockdown Rock. It’s part of your day every single day. Whether it’s on your way to work, on your lunch break, enjoying a nice Saturday afternoon, whenever it is that you listen to this show, thank you so much for making it part of your day every single day. Let’s start with the awesome exciting news that uh we get to experience Houston Rockets basketball a little bit before everybody else gets to experience their teams playing because the Rockets get slated for opening night of this upcoming NBA season. Houston Rockets at Oklahoma City Thunder per Sham Shirania of ESPN. Uh, one of the two opening night games, the other one being the Golden State Warriors at the Los Angeles Lakers. So, the Rockets will be there on opening night as the OKC Thunder are celebrating their championship as they are raising their banner, as they do their ring ceremony, all of that. Which means the Rockets have the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever and spoil that ring ceremony the exact same way that the Rockets came in and spoiled the ring ceremony for the Warriors all those years ago with Kev with with James Harden and Chris Paul on the road in the Bay Area. And now flip the script. The Rockets have a chance to do it again to the defending champion OKC Thunder. Honestly, really excited to have that as the first game of the season. Um, it’s going to be an incredible battle between real two really talented teams. And for the Rockets, you know, it’s going to put them to the test right out of the gate, right? not a ton of time to mesh to, you know, see where guys are going to fit in to see how this team is going to uh work together. They’re going to be thrown straight into the deep end, tossed into the fire the moment the season starts. And honestly, wouldn’t have it any other way, right? Immediately get in there, see what this team is made of. Um, that’s what, look, that’s what training camp is for. That’s what the entire buildup to the actual season is for. That’s what those preseason games are for. It’s to get your team ready for the regular season. I know there’s usually, you know, that that period of time, you know, five, 10, 15 games or so where the entire team needs to gel and figure things out. So, from that perspective, it’s a little bit disappointing, but there will be multiple other matchups with the OKC Thunder as the season progresses. Um, so even if the Rockets don’t come out and uh, you know, spoil the ring ceremony on opening night, it’s going to be a great test regardless for this Rockets team to see what they’re made of. Uh, this new iteration Rockets team with Kevin Durant leading the charge. And, uh, this is the kind of attention you get when you have a superstar talent like KD. Suddenly, you’re back in the spotlight. And honestly, it’s awesome because the Rockets have been in like NBA purgatory for the last, you know, five years or so with very few nationally televised games, with no Christmas Day games, with no opening night games. Like, it’s been disappointing. right now. The Rockets, similar to the Lakers, uh maybe less so the Celtics this upcoming season, but you know, they’ll be back up there with the top of the top of the NBA as far as discussions day in day out, what they’re doing, what they’re not doing. Um the media cycle is probably going to become a bit unbearable at times with, you know, uh guys like Stephen A. Smith sharing his his thoughts on what, you know, Kevin Durant should or shouldn’t be doing on this team, things of that nature. But that’s also, you know, what comes with being one of the top tier teams. That’s what comes with the territory of being a legitimate contender is you garner a level of respect from from the fans, from the media, and and obviously from the NBA scheduling department because the Rockets are back uh playing these, you know, kind of marquee games, these marquee matchups, uh which is always a ton of fun to be a part of. So, love that the Rockets have a chance to spoil the ring ceremony for the OKC Thunder on opening night. Uh, and they get the early game on opening night because the other game’s the super duper late West Coast tip off. So, this will probably be like a a you know, tune in starting at like 6:00 p.m. 6:30 p.m. kind of thing for the Rockets um on opening night. And then the Christmas Day slate for the NBA. Rockets at Lakers in the middle of the Christmas Day slate. So the entire slate is Cavs at Knicks to start things off. Then you got the Spurs at the Thunder. Then you have Rockets at Lakers, Mavericks at Warriors, and Wolves at Nuggets. Uh honestly, really stacked Christmas Day slate. Um kind of funny that they went super heavy on the Western Conference. I guess it just kind of goes to show you that so much of the Western Conference is topheavy and there’s so many question marks about the Eastern Conference. They didn’t even want to run the risk of like, you know, maybe Orlando will be good. Maybe we’ll throw them against somebody. And so it’s it’s one Eastern Conference matchup versus four Western Conference matchups. So you get the Cavs Knicks, you get Wimby versus OKC, uh obviously Rockets, Lakers, KD versus LeBron. That’ll be a ton of fun. Um, Shingun, Luca, Amen, all of that. Uh, Mavericks, Warriors. I I will say I think they fumbled on the Christmas Day slate. I think it should have been Rockets and Mavs flip-flopped, but also because they had Warriors at Lakers on opening day or the opening night. I feel like they could they felt like they couldn’t repeat that for the Christmas Day slate, unfortunately. Um, and they weren’t going to give the Lakers a road game, right? You want the Lakers to have a home game on Christmas Day, unfortunately. So, but it would have made a lot more narrative sense to have the Rockets playing the Warriors as one of, you know, somewhere in one of these two marquee matchups, if only because, you know, the Rockets and the Warriors have so much history, so much history between those two teams. And the fact that Kevin Durant is now playing for the Houston Rockets is even better. Like, I don’t know. The only other way that you could have maybe spun it a little bit differently is maybe you give you throw the Clippers out there as one of the matchups because the Rockets and Clippers have some narrative history now as well with James Harden and Chris Paul and the Clippers should project to be a really really good team. Although, you know, they’re, you know, like a billion years old. So, I don’t know how that one would all work out, but I I like the Christmas Day slate. I think it’s going to be a ton of amazing basketball from start to finish that day. Um, the Mavericks maybe don’t deserve to be on the Christmas Day slate, honestly. Um, but I think that’s just them trying to feature uh their recent number one overall pick with Cooper Flag. They want to give him, you know, a n, you know, a prime time slot to kind of showcase what he hopefully becomes for the Mavericks this upcoming season, all that good stuff. Um, but honestly, super excited for this next season with the Rockets uh again back in the spotlight. Uh, we’ll get hopefully the the full NBA schedule a little later this month. That’s usually when it comes out. uh probably in the next I would assume week or so week maybe couple weeks tops uh here in August and then we’ll have a better idea of what the rest of the season looks like. But on that note, I want to talk about the most anticipated games and matchups of the season. I do want your thoughts on the opening night matchup as well as the Christmas Day slate and the Rockets playing the Thunder, the Lakers, all that. Let me know your thoughts on those uh two marquee matchups in the YouTube comments. But coming up, we’ll talk about the most anticipated games and matchups of this upcoming Rocket season. We’re going to get there in just one moment. First, today’s episode is brought to you by Open Phone. Look, if you’re running a business, you know that every missed call is money left on the table. Think about the last time that you had an urgent need, maybe for a plumber or a different service provider. If the first person didn’t answer, did you wait around? Probably not. You moved on. That’s why you need Open Phone. 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I want your most anticipated games of this upcoming season. matchups are you really looking forward to seeing this next year? Uh, for me, I’ve got I’ve got six of them lined up here, and I have them in order for my most anticipated to my like not least, but just, you know, whatever. I have them on an excitement scale, I guess. Um, a fun meter scale, if you will. Uh, where’s my where’s my I deserve the fun meter reference deserves an oh my where’s my oh my. Oh my. There we go. All right. So, at the top, I I couldn’t have had any other team here. Rockets versus Warriors. Like, the team that eliminated you from the playoffs this past season, the team that you have so much history with that your histories are so intertwined now, weirdly enough, now that Kevin Durant is playing in a Rockets jersey, which is like some weird Stranger Thingsesque like upside down type scenario. Um, Rockets versus Warriors is going to be a ton of fun. that that is my number one matchup that I am looking forward to seeing the rematch between the Warriors and Rockets and and watching Kevin Durant and the Rockets just dust the floor with Steph Curry, uh, Jimmy Butler, and Draymond Green. That’s going to be a ton of fun. I’ve got that at the top of my list, period. There was zero consideration, zero other option for the number one like team that I’m waiting to see this Rockets team play this upcoming season. Number two on my list, and this is where things might get a little controversial, but uh I I I I had to go with uh Suns at Rockets, the return of the prodigal son, Jaylen Green, of Dylan Brooks, the uh rematch for Kevin Durant with his former team. There are going to be probably some fireworks in that matchup. Jaylen Green teed it up himself already talking about trying to drop 30 on on Houston the next time, you know, whenever they see each other. Um, you know that the Rockets are want to are going to want to put out their best performance to to show one up on on Kevin Durant’s former team. And obviously they’re going to want to ball out against Jaylen and Dylan and and both Jaylen and Dylan are going to be playing with massive chips on their shoulder against the Rockets. We might be in for a patented like Dylan Brooks tries to take over the game and maybe it goes good, maybe it goes horribly. Who knows? Um, and with the Suns, with some of the moves that they made this past offseason, right, like I don’t think they’re gonna make a ton of noise in the West, but they’re also not going to be a complete pushover either way. So, uh, it should be a a fun competitive battle between those two teams. And it’ll be it’ll be emotional, right, having Jaylen Green and Dylan Brooks back in the building after, you know, what this team had gone through the past two years, what they were a part of building, and the direction this team is still headed. The Rockets wouldn’t be headed where they are right now. how they wouldn’t have the chance to win a title this upcoming season and over these next couple years with Kevin Durant if it wasn’t for all of the work that Jaylen and Dylan helped put in. So, that matchup is number two on my list. And for all those same reasons, I also have the inverse of that matchup, Suns or sorry, Rockets at Suns because that’s a different version of that matchup, right? It’s it’s the same kind of thing, but it’s it’s Katie’s return to the desert. It’s him playing in, you know, his former home team arena. all the Sun stands angry at KD because of how he left and the fact that he wasn’t able to bring him a title and and all that stuff and and I really do I kind of hope that they play like the Suns play the Rockets at home first and then the Rockets get to go to the desert later on and play them there. um th both those matchups are my two and three matchups uh on this like expectations list because again every single time moving forward there’s going to be a little look it’s it’s obviously all love between Jaylen Dylan and all the guys like they you know they all really got along they love each other but once it’s on the court it’s war right and watching those guys actually go at each other is going to be so much fun to witness every single time the Rockets and Suns match up so I’ve got Warriors then Suns at Rockets, then Rockets at Suns. Those are my top three games. And then I’ve got Rockets versus Clippers. For me personally, I I I I cannot wait to see this Kevin Durant le Houston Rockets team take on a James Harden and Chris Paulled Clippers team. Now, I know that Chris Paul isn’t technically one of the leaders. He’s not even probably going to be a starter for the Clippers, but it’s still Chris Paul and James Harden on the Clippers and Kevin Durant on the Rockets, as weird as that all feels. And watching those guys battle it out is going to be it’s it’s going to be a little bittersweet, honestly, because of thinking back to how differently things could have been with Chris Paul and James Harden, you know, as teammates in Houston, how close they came to dethroning the Golden State Warriors in 2018. um that they were, you know, call it one hamstring away from a title, all that stuff. And that that matchup is going to be a little bittersweet. And again, it’s going to be kind of weird rooting for Kevin Durant to beat James Harden and seeing KD in a Rockets jersey against those two guys who meant so much to Houston Sports just a short like six or seven years ago. Like that’s the crazy part is it’s not like it was like a whole generation ago. It was not even less than a decade ago. like kind of crazy. So, uh, plus the Clippers team looks absolutely stacked talent-wise and assuming they’re actually able to remain healthy through the regular season. Um, their roster should be a nightmare to deal with. And so, that’ll be a really fun test and it’ll be a good kind of preview to see like, okay, are the Clippers actually serious? Are they legit? Or are they a team that you really want to try to avoid in the postseason at all costs? So, I got the Clippers there as my next matchup. And then I’ve got the Nuggets in there. Um, mainly just because even though there’s not really any like history or narrative stuff going on between the Rockets and Nuggets, I firmly believe the Rockets and Nuggets are right there on the exact same tier in the Western Conference. And so for me, the anticipation for that game is just how do the Rockets stack up to Denver? Because I think it’s it’s clearly OKC number one spot in the Western Conference power rankings. And then right after OKC, you go like 1A Rockets, one B Nuggets. And like I could hear arguments for either team. And I could hear arguments that the Nuggets are slightly ahead of or better than the Rockets. And they wouldn’t be wrong is the thing. And so I want to see how the Rockets actually stack up compared to the Nuggets. And that’s why I’m excited for that game. It’s always a ton of fun also watching Alp and Joic go headto-head. We know that Alp really loves those matchups in particular. Watching Ahmond Thompson hound Jamal Murray around the perimeter should be a ton of fun. Um there’s a lot to look forward to in those matchups. Plus with the Nuggets adding Jonas Valenunis. Like I I firmly believe that at some point in that matchup the Nuggets are going to trot out a Yonas Joic like front court and the Rockets will have a Adams Shingun front court. Um that should be a ton of fun. And not sure if we’ll get it specifically in that matchup, but at some point maybe we’ll see Clint Capella on the floor against the Nuggets because uh historically Clint Capella has like, you know, just taken Jokic to school. He’s had issues with Capella throughout his career. So maybe that’ll be a matchup, you know, maybe that’s a weapon that the Rockets have uh some kryptonite in their back pocket for Nicola Joic. Clint Capella running the floor and rebounding and playing above the rim to to give him some trouble. Um, and I a little bit lower on the list. I I I I should have factored in the OKC matchup honestly in here. I don’t know where I’d slot OKC. Probably I’d probably slot OKC after the two Suns games, but ahead of the Clippers game because there is some history between the Rockets and Thunder. Obviously, there’s some weird intertwined stuff going on there as well. Obviously KD having played for the Thunder, you know, won his MVP there, been such a fixture for that organization. The Rockets and Thunder have a bit of a healthy rivalry brewing, which is always a ton of fun um in these NBA circles. And since the Warriors are kind of, you know, fading at this stage, and we don’t know how many, you know, strong years the Warriors have left, it seems like the Rockets and Thunder are developing a a budding, healthy rivalry that will hopefully carry on for the better part of this next decade. Um because it’s always more fun when you have an NBA rival to kind of, you know, compare yourself to, to stack up to. And who better than to be in a rivalry with than the defending NBA champions, right? You don’t want some, you know, Joe Blow team that hasn’t won anything to be rivals with. You want the top of the top. And the Rockets are certainly right there with the OKC Thunder. So, um, and then look, there’s the usual suspects as well. Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs, you know, seeing what Cooper Flag is made of in Dallas. Uh, watching Shingun, uh, you know, punk Wimby again is always going to be a ton of fun. So, uh, I I don’t have those as highly rated as some of these other matchups, although they’re certainly in the mix. And then I will give an honorable mention to the uh to the Miami Heat and uh, the grunge match that will always ensue forever more between Ammon Thompson and Tyler Harrow. uh watching those two guys play against each other again. Uh especially last season after Aman Thompson, you know, he ragdalled Tyler Herro and then, you know, they went into Miami and Ammon Thompson came back early from that ankle injury just to play that one game and then went out there and just absolutely dominated the matchup and made Tyler Herrell look silly. Like you know that Amond Thompson has those Heat matchups circled on his calendar. He’s got two matchups against the Heat every year. He’s got both of them circled every single time with a little like go kill Tyler Harrow type message, you know, drafted up or something like that. So, those are the matchups in order that I’m most anticipating for this upcoming season. The ones that I’m most excited for. Um, I definitely want to hear your most anticipated matchups. Which games are you most looking forward to this upcoming season? Hopefully, we’ll get the official schedule drop in the notsodistant future to be able to talk about. Coming up, we’re going to hit uh a couple more notes about media day and training camp, the dates for those being revealed, what we can expect out of those, all that good stuff coming up here in just one moment. First, today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Summer sports are in full swing, and whether you’re all about baseball under the lights, golf on the green, or highstakes soccer action, FanDuel is the best way to make every game even more exciting. Look, you’re already following the action. Why not make it a little bit more thrilling? You can use FanDuel to track your favorite matchups and the app keeps it fresh with new daily promotions and fun ways to bet. Check out their parlay builder. Build yourself a winning card. Or just go check out the outright favorites for like this year’s World Series, right? Uh the Dodgers right now, the favorites at plus 250. Then in distant second place, you got the Phillies at plus 700, the Tigers plus 1,000, the Mariners plus,00 right there with the Brewers also plus,00. and then your Houston Astros plus $1,200 to win it all this baseball season. If you’re new to FanDuel, new customers can bet just $5 and get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Again, that’s 150 bucks in bonus bets if you bet just $5 and win. Open the FanDuel app today or visit fanuel.com to get started. and final segment here at Locked on Rockets, your daily podcast, home for everything Houston Rockets basketball. Also, I apologize. I had not realized I had it in my notes and I completely glazed over it. Um, the NBA is actually set to release the full schedule uh next week, Thursday, uh, the 14th of August. So, we don’t have to wait like two more weeks. It’s not like going to be a surprise. There’s like a specific date where they’re releasing the schedule. So, um, I had that in my notes and just completely glossed over it. I was like, I guess it’ll come out in the next couple weeks. It always comes out in the middle of middle of August. Anyways, uh let’s get to some more scheduling stuff here for the Houston Rockets. Um they are expected to host their media day for this upcoming season on Monday, September 29th. Um media day is almost always right there at the, you know, the final day or two of September or sometimes like that first day or two of October and then they’ll immediately dive straight into training camp uh following that. So, generally, you know, the Rockets training camp has been, you know, Tuesday through Friday or Tuesday through Saturday or Sunday, uh, immediately following media day. And, uh, what’s fun, funny enough, uh, September 29th will actually be Kevin Durant’s 37th birthday. So, they’ll be hosting media day on the 29th on Katie’s birthday. And that will unfortunately, as it seems right now, that’ll probably be the Rockets like, you know, I guess formal like introductory press conference of sorts for KD. Um, you know, we talked about it before and similar to when the Rockets traded for and acquired Chris Paul or when they signed Dwight Howard, you know, historically the Rockets have liked and and enjoyed doing these kind of like, you know, big shows for these marquee additions to the roster. Um, unfortunately, uh, it seems like that’s probably not going to be the case with KD. And it’s not that the Rockets didn’t want to do it. Um, it’s just KD is a guy that has so many obligations, you know, in the off seasonason. Uh, prior, you know, business commitments and things of that nature, as well as, you know, the issue with the NBA offseason, right? This is a time for players to be able to, you know, spend time with friends and family and and people that they don’t really get to see a lot of throughout the regular season. So, you know, you know, as frustrating as it might be that the Rockets aren’t going to maybe get a chance to, you know, turn on the bright lights and make a big dog and pony show of like, hey, we got KD, like, you know, that kind of thing. Um, they would probably love to be able to do it and it’s just probably not in the cards as far as scheduling is concerned. Um, so that’s certainly, you know, a bit of a disappointment there, but it also kind of makes sense because like at the end of the day, you know, I if if they were able to pull it off and do it like in late July or early August, right, then it would have been, you know, cool and it would have been a nice like kind of tent pole event to have in the offseason, engage the fans and, you know, push some tickets to the uh to the season ticket holders, all that good stuff. Pardon me. But um you know the thing the fact of the matter is you know Katie is going to answer a bunch of the same questions at media day that he would have had to answer during an introductory press conference. You know how excited are you about being in Houston? What do you think about your fit? What do you think about the other young guys? And so you know even if there was a window to maybe do it here at the end of August or early September, it kind of doesn’t make sense now because it’s just like you’re so close to media day anyways. You might as well just lump the two together. Um, usually at media day there’s always, you know, one or two sets of interviews or player interviews that go longer than the others. Obviously, like, you know, we’re not going to spend as much time talking to Josh Aogi as we are going to spend talking to Kevin Durant, asking questions and, you know, thoughts and expectations about the season and things like that. I would imagine that Rocket’s PR is going to account for that and give, you know, media give reporters ample amount of time to ask KD questions at media day. I’m I would imagine he’ll be the longest media day interview. Um like without a doubt. I’m talking we’re probably going to get him for at least like 20 20 minutes or so. I would hope maybe even longer than that. Um to be able to, you know, really air out every single question, get get his, you know, thoughts, his responses. And KD is a pretty candid dude. You know, he’s so I I you know, I haven’t had the opportunity of, you know, obvious obviously asking him a media day question before, but you know, in postgame interviews, practice interviews, he’s usually pretty transparent about what he’s feeling or thinking about a game or about, you know, situations with his teams in the past. So, I’m kind of, you know, uh looking forward to and excited for the opportunity to cover him just on a personal level because, you know, he’s an all-time great player and, uh, those opportunities don’t come along a lot. you know, similar to cheering for an all-time great player on your team, covering an all-time player. All-time great player is also a very unique experience. Um, as like a weird anecdote, right? Like I I still remember like the first time I got the chance to ask Greg Papovic like a question in a like media press conference capacity. It’s like a really weird feeling because you’re like that’s like like that’s Greg Papovich or like asking LeBron James a question. you’re kind of like, whoa, like that’s LeBron. And it takes like a minute to like, you know, let the let the stardust kind of settle and you’re like, okay, like get back get back to doing the job. Um, but it is just kind of a weird thing that that, you know, you have to mentally check, I guess. Um, weirdly enough. Um, on that note, uh, the training camp should be, you know, pro he’ll probably be in Houston again. you know, in years past, the Rockets have done um you know, they’ve gone down to Galveston or they’ve gone to uh MCNE State over in Lake Charles. Um I would imagine that because they’ve still got this, you know, shiny brand new training facility that they’re just going to want to keep everything in house, do it here in Houston. Uh let the players be comfortable in their homes as opposed to forcing them to travel somewhere. Although there is apparently um Dorian Finny Smith was on a podcast recently and uh let slip that there is uh a team excursion if you will early in September uh where it looks like the guys are all going to go out um and kind of you know team bonding experience that kind of thing ahead of the regular season ahead of media day and training camp and and kind of firing all that stuff up. Uh, so that’ll be good for the team to really get some chemistry and get to know each other a little bit. And they’ve already kind of started that a little bit with the fact that you’ve got so many different people out in Turkey right now celebrating. Alpen Shingun celebrating his birthday. Um, training with him. We’ve talked about Fred Vanble being out there with Alp obviously, but you’ve got a lot of the Rockets coaching staff is out there. Emodoka is out there. Hell, Dylan Brooks was out in Turkey hanging out with Alp um despite being traded. like that just shows you how how tight-knit and close this group is. So, um the camaraderie, you know, still at an all-time high for this Rockets team. Uh really excited to see how KD kind of meshes into all of this. Uh, I will say really quickly to wrap up uh today’s episode as we navigate the rest of MB August, NBA August, uh, with, you know, there’s, you know, still plenty of stuff for us to talk about, but one of the things that I’m going to steal, I’m going to borrow this idea from, uh, my good friends over at Locked on Heat. They started running a segment called locked off heat that they do is like kind of a weird mailbag segment where sometimes for, you know, a few minutes each show or for a whole segment sometimes they talk about anything other than the Miami Heat. So, if you guys got anything you want to hear about other than the Houston Rockets in a segment or two as we’re navigating the dog days of the NBA offseason, give me your thoughts in the YouTube comments. What would you like to hear about? It could be it could be about other NBA teams if you want other basketball stuff that’s not related to the Rockets. That’s always ton of fun. That’s why we’ve done some of these crossovers recently about the Mavericks and Pistons. Um or it could be something totally random like, you know, food, music, movies, like whatever. Um it’s just one of those where if uh if you want to hit me with those questions and maybe we’ll make it a make it a fun recurring thing moving forward. Uh we’ll also be doing a live mailbag show somewhere somewhere here down the line. Um, and one other thing that I want to do that we’re going to get to at some point here in August, um, I’ve had multiple people reach out to me about this over the years, and I I want to sit down and actually do it, uh, is kind of a peak behind the curtain, a behind the scenes, if you will, of what life is like as an NBA reporter, kind of the day-to-day operations, how things work, what a game day looks like, um, what it’s like interviewing executives, players, coaches, agents, like that kind of stuff, how it all works. Basically, a peak behind the curtain. And so, I’m hoping that I can do one of those. you know, in the notsodistant future for you guys. You get a better idea of kind of how the job works and how, you know, all all the strings get pulled behind, you know, behind the curtain, all that good stuff. Um, but with that, that’s going to do it for today’s episode. I definitely want your thoughts on the Rockets playing on opening night, uh, of this next NBA season against the Thunder, their Christmas Day matchup against the Lakers, um, back them being back in the national spotlight. A ton of fun, very exciting there. Uh, as well as the games that you’re most anticipating this upcoming season. Give me all your thoughts in the YouTube comments. But as always, thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. And we look forward to having you back right here at Locked On Rockets, your daily podcast home for everything Houston Rockets basketball.

Rockets RETURN To National Spotlight | OKC Thunder Ring Ceremony SPOILER Alert?

Houston Rockets return to the national spotlight with prime-time games. Are they poised for a resurgence?

Host Jackson Gatlin (@JTGatlin) breaks down the Rockets NBA schedule leaks, highlighting their opening night clash against OKC Thunder and Christmas Day showdown with the Lakers. The discussion covers Kevin Durant’s impact, anticipated matchups against Warriors and Suns, and the team’s upcoming media day. Key topics include budding rivalries and expectations for the season ahead.

Tune in for insider analysis on the Rockets’ path back to contention and how Durant’s addition reshapes their championship aspirations.

#Rockets #NBA #KevinDurant

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