I'm Thank you. All right. All right. Welcome everybody back to the PHLY Sixers show. I am Derek Bodner, and this time joined by my old pal and colleague, Rich Hoffman, who, gosh, we probably podcasted together for about a decade now, which means we're both old. But how are you doing, Rich? Derek, I'm doing fine. This is a little different for me. It's different. Last time I talked to you on a podcast, we did not have all of these bright lights. We also did not have this gorgeous studio. It was a very different experience for sure. You don't get to clean up my mistakes this time afterwards too. I do not. The fundamental difference though is now that our podcast is live and it won't be irrelevant because we send it out 24 hours later for separate reasons. That's true. That's true. And we've got a team of gifted individuals here to make us sound even better than we normally do, or at least slightly better than we normally do. I guess where we'll start off, because Kyle and I sort of touched on this topic a little bit in yesterday's show, but we want to dive a lot deeper into this with you here in the studio. Nick Nurse, you know, a lot of the Sixers roster right now is very similar to last year, you know, barring what happens with that James Hardin situation. So a lot of the growth is either going to go down to players like Tyrese, we talked about a lot yesterday, or just changes in how you use those players, which comes down to Nick

Nurse. So I think we're going to talk a little bit about Nick, get a little deeper into

the changes he might make. But overall, we'll start off just with a broader question. What's

your general thought on the hiring of Nick Nurse and what he could do to this stuff?

Well, I like the hiring of Nick Nurse. I thought he was pretty much the best coach out on the market.

I think we had previously talked about that.

But it's worth noting that you and I feel about coaching probably differently than most Sixers' fans.

I would say, it's fair to say we disagree with fans about a lot of stuff, right? People comment us on Twitter in the comments section, all of those things.

But I would say over the years, the number one thing fans have disagreed with me about

is the importance of an NBA coach.

Do you think that's the same as you, or do you think there's something?

No, I think, you know, on the one hand, I've always thought that coaches can be the slight differences that can take a team from being close to getting over the top. When you get into a seven-game series where there's a lot of back and force where both teams are getting a chance to really know each other's strengths and weaknesses, those adjustments can be, you know, maybe not a drastic impact. You're not changing the complexion of your team, but they could

be necessary to get you over that hump. But the problems of the team, the strengths and weaknesses

generally come down to the star players. And I think that's true. Now, the question is why

or not that leap from, you know, Doc Rivers, who has had struggles at times

in the playoffs. We'll just put it lightly with that. Come on. To Nick Nurse, is that substantial

enough where you don't need to completely remake the roster and he can get them over the hump

that they've never gotten? So I think fans generally say, you know, the coach is a problem.

And a lot of times I think that's letting the players off the hook,

or at times letting the general manager off the hook, I agree with you 100% there.

But with the way that the six have come up short here in the second round year after year,

it's interesting to watch play out for sure.

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