Hello, you there?

All right, welcome everybody. This is Derek. I'm joined by Rich. In a surprise episode of the Sixers Beat, not too much for a surprise. I think we planned on doing one before Thursday's trade deadline and probably won after Tray's deadline, but certainly did not plan on doing one. Today, we of course got that surprise. That voice you heard

at the beginning of the podcast was a dramatic recreation of Rich waking me up at 2.30 in the gosh

darn morning earlier today about the Sixers and Los Angeles Clippers trade, which saw the Sixers

bring in. Tobias Harris, I had made the mistake.

You know, I think when we were at the game, it was pretty obvious something was

ruined.

You know, first we noticed right away, nobody from the front office was on the floor before

the game walking around mingling.

There's nobody there.

The Nelton brand was probably a solid 30 minutes or so late getting to his typical seat behind the baseline.

And then after the game, Brett Brown came out and admitted, oh, I didn't know J.J. Reddick wasn't playing until two minutes before the game because I was talking to Elton about trade deadline chatter.

Which is funny because we knew 15 minutes before the game because I was talking to Elton about trade deadline chatter. Which is funny because we knew 15 minutes before the game sitting in the media room. Right, right, exactly. And you could tell, like, JJ Redick, he went through about two minutes of his pregame shooting routine. That usually takes him 10 to 15 minutes. So you knew something was up. You knew he wasn't feeling well. And that was a solid hour before the game. So this was out there. Brett Brown just wasn't available to be told this. So you get back. You start talking. You know, like, there was a sense that something was coming and that something was close. I thought I had enough time to fall asleep for a couple hours. Like my intention was to go to sleep at 1.30, wake up at about 5.30.

I was going to either write about trade deadline activity or I was going to write about the game that happened last night.

You called me about 45 minutes, maybe an hour into my sleep.

And very rudely, very appreciatively woke me up.

And here we are.

The rest is history.

Yes, I was trying.

Thank you, Wawa.

I'm very appreciative of the 48 ounces of coffee I ended up drinking at 4 a.m.

You helped me get through this trying time, but here we are.

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