In today's episode of the Sixers beat, Rich and I preview Thursday night's NBA draft.

Going over the strengths, weaknesses, and fit for a bunch of the players who could be available when the Sixers select at 23.

Enjoy the podcast. Welcome, everybody. This is Derek Bidner, joined by Rich Hoffman on Sixers Beat, a part of the Athletics Podcast Network.

How you doing, Rich?

Derek, I'm doing great. It's draft week, buddy. It is draft week. We have put this podcast off a little bit, in part, mostly because we wanted to do our research. You know, I guess we should probably get the disclaimers out of the way. Rich and I used to dive pretty heavy into draft coverage way back in the day. I used to, I pretty much got my start in basketball writing for Draft Express. That used to be, I would almost classify that as my full-time job. If there is a spectrum between Spike Eskin and his YouTube big board and Mike Schmitz, my former, and by the way, I don't think I mentioned this on the pod, but congrats to Mike Schmidt's, my former colleague at Draft Express, who is now an assistant GM with the Blazers. But there is a spectrum between Spike Eskin and Mike Schmitz. I'm trending a little closer to Spike than I feel comfortable. I'm way too close to that. I don't think I'm that far off. Yeah. Look, it's, I don't know. Like, we care about the actual team now. And that's, that's part of it. And I don't get a paycheck to cover the draft anymore. No. So anyway, my point is, I think it's very important because part of things that used to drive me insane when I used to cover the draft on a full-time basis is, you know, the helicopter draft analyst who would swoop in the last minute, pretend that they know what they were talking about and just spout takes. So look, while we did our research,

it's not as well-formed. I guess the way I would phrase this is these are a little bit more

first impressions than they are fully scouted prospects from our perspective. But I'm not watching

as many full games as I used to. You, correct. I'm watching some synergy clips.

I'm reading as much as possible.

And look, I think it'll be good.

If the Sixers make the pick, then we can dig deep into the one or two, however many players that they have on the team.

And by the way, I also don't want to say that it's

unimportant now that the Sixers are picking later in the draft. It is less important than when

it was a top five pick. But honestly, to, you know, and you wrote about this, I would say three

years ago. You were, I think you were the first person to be like, look, now that you got Embed being

expensive back when Ben Simmons was finally getting expensive, the way to sustain, you know, a very

competitive team over time is you got to hit on some of these late picks. You got to exceed your

draft slot. And, you know, the Sixers have done, I think, pretty well over that time.

I think with Tyrese maxi, you know, it's, I think that is an outsized hit to the point where, you know, you're not going to do that every year.

But I think even with Thibel, who has struggled over the past couple years as well, you have shake Milton as a second round pick.

They've done some pretty good things.

Be ball,

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