On today's episode of The Sixers Beat, I have Mike O'Connor on to talk about the team's

recent play, why there's so much inconsistency in their effort night to night, how much of

that falls on Brett Brown's shoulders and whether there's a leadership void in the Sixers'

locker room before finally wrapping up with

some quick thoughts on today's upcoming trade deadline and bemoaning the lack of flexibility

the Sixers have in addressing the shortcomings of their roster.

Of note, we recorded this podcast just before the news that the Sixers acquired Alec Berks

and Glenn Robinson III from the Warriors. But since most of the podcast

wasn't about the trade deadline,

and since we did mention both Berks

and Robinson towards the end of the podcast anyway,

we still wanted to post this episode.

We will have another podcast later this weekend

to talk about all the Sixers'

trade deadline moves.

And with that out of the way, on the show.

All right, welcome, everybody.

This is Derek Bodner, joined by Mike O'Connor on the Sixers Beat,

proudly a part of the Athletic Podcast Network. How you doing, Mike?

I'm good, man. I'm, like everybody else, I'm overreacting to every noise my phone makes,

uh, waiting on some news, just waiting on news. I, I am taking a phone call right now as we speak in the middle of this podcast.

Well, I'm not.

...