In today's episode of The Sixers Beat, Rich and I react to JJ Redick's interview with Ben Simmons

before diving into our analysis of what to expect from the Sixers' defense this season.

Be sure to follow Rich on Twitter at Rich underscore Hoffman.

You can follow myself at Derek Bodner, NBA.

And be sure to leave us a rating on your podcast player of choice if you can.

Enjoy the podcast.

All right, welcome everybody.

This is Derek Bodner, joined once again by Rich Hoffman on a Sixers Beat, part of the Athletics Podcast Network.

Hey, doing Rich.

Derek, I'm doing fine.

It's the first day of fall, and it kind of feels like it.

It really does.

Second day of fall, actually.

Yeah, I don't know.

All I know is that I went out to get coffee this morning, and it was freaking cold. I am not a huge fan of how quickly that transition happens, but it, you know, it also means basketball's back. This is the last podcast we will do before we have, like, legitimate basketball news to talk about, but this is one more we got to get through. we of course, we'll start this off with a little bit talk about Ben Simmons since he appeared on JJ Redix podcast. And then we'll do the second part of our two-part series where we focus in on our

expectations for the defense. So I'm not even really sure because he was, Ben was on JJ's,

and this was really the first time Ben has talked.

I know he had, he did Media Day, or not Media Day, but he did a press conference after the trade, but he really hasn't spoken too much on the record about what has happened here, what happened at the end of his Philadelphia tenure.

This is a long podcast over an hour long where he touches on a lot of the topics from

the Hawks series, you know, to his, his mental health struggles, to discussing the shooting,

to a little bit of talk early on in the podcast about his early days in Philadelphia. Where would you,

I guess what was your overall takeaway from it? It was certainly, and we like JJ a lot here. I think he's both been very good

...