Speaker 1: This podcast is part of the seventy Sixers podcast network
Speaker 1: search seventy Sixers Podcast wherever you get your pods. When
Speaker 1: it comes to someone like Doc Rivers, it's hard not
Speaker 1: to have preconceived notions about the guy, and in this case,
Speaker 1: that's a really good thing. He's universally respected, well liked, accomplished,
Speaker 1: a great ambassador for the game. Then you meet him
Speaker 1: and you find out real quick he is the real deal.
Speaker 1: I want to win. I've coached long enough. I want
Speaker 1: a title. Once you win one, you need another one.
Speaker 1: Not for legacy. I can care less about that. Because
Speaker 1: you need another one, you just one another. That's my drive,
Speaker 1: That's what drives me, and that's what gets me up
Speaker 1: in the morning. On the day the Doc was formally
Speaker 1: introduced as the seventy sixers next head coach, we talked
Speaker 1: about a lot from grub Yeah, I think I'm be
Speaker 1: considered a foody to music. I'm a big Luther guy,
Speaker 1: and I'm a huge Daddy V guy. But mostly his
Speaker 1: views on the team he's inheriting and his coaching philosophies
Speaker 1: accountability the word I like using over all those cooperation
Speaker 1: and when you get that buy in that's how you
Speaker 1: do it. On this episode of the broadcast, we go
Speaker 1: one on one with Doc Rivers. I am excited, really excited, pumped, stoked.
Speaker 1: I want the season to start right now. Gosh darn it.
Speaker 1: Doc Rivers is the next head coach of the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: seventy six ers, and I think the old hear over
Speaker 1: the course of the next half hour. He's got a
Speaker 1: great vision for the franchise and just seems like an
Speaker 1: absolutely humble, grounded human being. And you can't have enough
Speaker 1: of those people around. I'm Brian Seltzer. Thank you very
Speaker 1: much for checking out this episode of the broadcast. Let
Speaker 1: us get right to it. Doc Rivers was formally introduced
Speaker 1: as the seventy six ers head coach in a virtual
Speaker 1: press conference on Monday at the seventy six ers training
Speaker 1: Plex and Camden, and by the time I sat down
Speaker 1: with Doc later in the afternoon, he had already done
Speaker 1: about two and a half hours worth of talking basketball,
Speaker 1: whether in media interviews, his press conference with staff members executives,
Speaker 1: so before he and I jumped into discussing hoops, his
Speaker 1: coaching philosophies, his outlook for the seventy six ers, I
Speaker 1: first wanted to ask him some icebreaker style get to
Speaker 1: know you type questions. If you're not coaching the basketball
Speaker 1: team or poring over your notes related to basketball, what
Speaker 1: are you interested in? What are some of the things
Speaker 1: you're trying to do well. If I'm not working, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's the off season, I'm golfing for sure, or traveling.
Speaker 1: I do like to travel, but I do travel to golf,
Speaker 1: so it's all related it. It's funny. I'm not that
Speaker 1: good of a golfer. I just love to play golf,
Speaker 1: So that would be my answer. Why do you love it?
Speaker 1: It takes It's a great focus game. It is. I
Speaker 1: played during the season if I can, you know. If
Speaker 1: it's when I was in Boston, I had a hitting
Speaker 1: studio in my house to it just you have to
Speaker 1: focus to golf. And I thought it was great for
Speaker 1: me to get my mind off from my job because
Speaker 1: I do internalize my job, and so I think golf
Speaker 1: is the one thing that I have finally found to
Speaker 1: take my mind off of it, which I think is
Speaker 1: very healthy. Have you ever golfed at any of the
Speaker 1: courses around here. I've golfed at a lot of the
Speaker 1: courses around here. Actually, it's it's been. It's really my
Speaker 1: reputation of liking golf does not match up in my
Speaker 1: ability to golf. And so when it was announced that
Speaker 1: I was coming here, I got calls from people friends
Speaker 1: that I've I've known here, or people from La connected
Speaker 1: me to people here. I've played Pine Valley, I've played Marion,
Speaker 1: I've played Manufacturers, I've played the Cricket Club. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I've I've played. What's your handicap? I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: share my handicap. But it's good. It's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a good handicap, tremendous. I feel like. One of the
Speaker 1: things I remember reading about when the articles came about
Speaker 1: how the Clippers were able to get Kauhai, you were
Speaker 1: at Nobu, and I wish that I could eat at
Speaker 1: restaurants like Nobu on the regular. But that got me wondering.
Speaker 1: Are you into food? Do you like? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: I would be considered a foodie. Um, you know some
Speaker 1: of my friends from Philly have already sent me a
Speaker 1: list of restaurants. Um, yeah, I am a foodie. Do
Speaker 1: you have any favorite types of food cuisines? You know
Speaker 1: I love sushi in different types of sushi. I love
Speaker 1: Spanish food. Actually, I love top Us Hyeah, and there's
Speaker 1: no American that doesn't need great Italian restaurants. So I
Speaker 1: got a feeling I'll do well here in that regard.
Speaker 1: Tell me about you, know, your your life with your family.
Speaker 1: How much does family mean to you? Well, families of
Speaker 1: the world. You know, um my ex and I have
Speaker 1: still very good friends. I have four kids and they're
Speaker 1: the world. I'm a grandfather two times over. And Austin
Speaker 1: did his what is his ginger revealed thing yesterday and
Speaker 1: now I'm gonna have another grandson. So I have two
Speaker 1: grand boys, two grandsons, and one grand daughter. There is
Speaker 1: parenting is awesome. I have four kids, three boys, one girl.
Speaker 1: The grand parenting is on another level. It is I
Speaker 1: tell you, there's nothing better than winning a game or
Speaker 1: even losing the game, and your daughter knowing that you're
Speaker 1: really happy or sad and she can see you a
Speaker 1: picture in your day changes. So that's been fantastic for me.
Speaker 1: Music or into music. You have music, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: have a favorite or a gamer. You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up I worked in a record store, a real record store.
Speaker 1: You play forty five's and and albums, and you know,
Speaker 1: every every time someone walked in, you had to put
Speaker 1: the needle on and they had to listen to it
Speaker 1: for fifteen seconds. Young people have no idea what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, but it was a great experience. Um and
Speaker 1: and I love jazz, h I love everything. I'm a
Speaker 1: big music guy. Every every game I play, I make
Speaker 1: a song list. Uh, and I play it going to
Speaker 1: every game. Really, can you give us us it? Maybe
Speaker 1: a sampling some of the artists, who oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'll go oh, because I'm a big Luther guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. My players laugh at me because
Speaker 1: I'll play slow music sometimes in on the floor and
Speaker 1: they're like, we're going to sleep. I said, no, one's
Speaker 1: getting you. It's getting you what it needs to get you,
Speaker 1: you know. So and I'm a huge Teddy pe guy.
Speaker 1: So uh, he's a filly guy. That's right, That's right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm a big music guy. You can never
Speaker 1: go wrong with some Luther and Teddy Pendergrass in your life.
Speaker 1: That is a fact. Doc and I then shifted our
Speaker 1: chat to basketball and how in an amazingly swift and
Speaker 1: dramatic turn of events, he ended up his head coach
Speaker 1: of the seventy six ers after seven strong seasons with
Speaker 1: the La Clippers. Do you feel like you're running on
Speaker 1: oxygen right now if you had a task to catch
Speaker 1: your breath over the last seven days. No, I haven't
Speaker 1: caught my breath yet. You know, It's funny. I'm going
Speaker 1: so fast right now that I don't sleep. You know,
Speaker 1: it can't sleep because your mind's on. You know, we
Speaker 1: got a lot of work to do, what we really do,
Speaker 1: and I'm a worker, and so right now I just
Speaker 1: feel like I have a lot to do, and so
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna work through it and then get my wrists. Well,
Speaker 1: what did you like viewing from the opposite sideline about
Speaker 1: the seventy six their size, their versatility. I think this
Speaker 1: team been what has been exactly? No one can tell you, Tobias,
Speaker 1: you see a three or four, Joel, you can blame
Speaker 1: at the five? Can you play with the four? Can
Speaker 1: you go be again? You know it's skill set is
Speaker 1: of a five and a four int a three? Josh?
Speaker 1: What is he? You know? You go down the list
Speaker 1: and they have a lot of guys that are to
Speaker 1: me what I call ballers, and they don't really have
Speaker 1: a position. I love position list teams, and so that's
Speaker 1: that's the appeal for me, other than Joel is going
Speaker 1: to be your five, you know, other than that everyone
Speaker 1: else is in flux. Can you walk me through the
Speaker 1: evolution of just kind of how things went like when
Speaker 1: you got the first call from the seventy six ers,
Speaker 1: when you heard from the just maybe thinking of this
Speaker 1: as like a narration of how a viewer a listener
Speaker 1: might hear the story of how this all came together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I get a call, I get released from the Clippers,
Speaker 1: right and within six hours my agent calls. Actually, when
Speaker 1: I called my agent and tell him, he said, well,
Speaker 1: I have three teams that have express interest if this happens,
Speaker 1: would you like me to call them? And I said
Speaker 1: I'd rather take a day and just relax. And within
Speaker 1: four hours he calls me back, Well, they've already called
Speaker 1: and now they all want you to come down. And
Speaker 1: I won't say the team's names, obviously, but I asked
Speaker 1: if one of them was the seventy six ers and
Speaker 1: he said yeah. I said, that's the one I want
Speaker 1: to take. Um, I want to come down and talk
Speaker 1: to them. They flew me down. I don't remember days,
Speaker 1: within forty eight hours and we met and you know,
Speaker 1: within another twenty four hours. We agree. I mean it
Speaker 1: was the quickest hiring firing hiring ever. So it's it's
Speaker 1: all good. Let's focus on the hiring part. Why do
Speaker 1: you think it came together that quickly? What were the factors?
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of good factors. One
Speaker 1: I wanted it, and and two they wanted me. You know,
Speaker 1: I think our discussion went great. You know, when I
Speaker 1: was very coming here, I didn't come here begging. I
Speaker 1: came here telling them what I saw, what I thought
Speaker 1: needed to be done for us to have a chance,
Speaker 1: and listen to what they saw. And I was very
Speaker 1: honest with him, and I said, if you don't see
Speaker 1: that vision, to be honest with me, because I don't
Speaker 1: want to come somewhere where you have a different vision.
Speaker 1: I want to win. I have no I've coached long
Speaker 1: enough and I've won a title, right and once you
Speaker 1: win one, you need another one, just not for legacy.
Speaker 1: I can't care less about that because you need another one.
Speaker 1: You just want another one. And that's my drive, that's
Speaker 1: what drives me, that's what gets me up in the morning.
Speaker 1: Can you maybe putt in the terms for the light
Speaker 1: person what that feeling is like, like the itch, the
Speaker 1: need to feel that experience again. The best feeling in
Speaker 1: the world winning It's the hardest thing you'll ever do,
Speaker 1: winning and the feeling of it is that not you
Speaker 1: did it, we did it. And when you reach that,
Speaker 1: there's no feeling in the world that that can copy.
Speaker 1: Watching young men cry jump around emotion because they know
Speaker 1: they did something extraordinary outside the box, and you want
Speaker 1: you want to go through that again. How do you
Speaker 1: make the wee happen? Oh gosh, you talk about it
Speaker 1: every day. It's habits, you know, accountability every single day, discipline.
Speaker 1: The word I like using over all those is cooperation.
Speaker 1: When you have a group of players, ownership, staff, everyone
Speaker 1: has to cooperate from the trainer down and that one can't.
Speaker 1: And when you get that buy in, that's how you
Speaker 1: do it. You just mentioned accountability. I was also probably
Speaker 1: very creepily lurking through your Twitter timeline and I saw
Speaker 1: a retweet from the author John Gordon, who I actually
Speaker 1: think that some of the employees with the seventy six
Speaker 1: there's an HBSc. When we first got here. We have
Speaker 1: to read some of these leadership books, and I think
Speaker 1: we read the ones that you tweeted about. Is he
Speaker 1: really Yeah? We go to dinner a lot, we share
Speaker 1: thoughts a lot, Yeah, and he's got some really poignant
Speaker 1: ones and ones about culture, about like the most important
Speaker 1: part of your job as a leader is to drive
Speaker 1: the culture. So it sounds like accountability is one thing.
Speaker 1: What are some of the other things that make up
Speaker 1: the goods of culture? Consistency? You know, you need you
Speaker 1: need that. You have to have consistent habits every day
Speaker 1: to drive culture. And the biggest thing that I think
Speaker 1: people miss is care. People like, why am I going
Speaker 1: to buy into a culture that doesn't care for me?
Speaker 1: And so you have to prove to them first. You
Speaker 1: have to love them first before they're going to love
Speaker 1: you back. And I think that's the most important part.
Speaker 1: Why did you realize that? I mean, is that something
Speaker 1: that like when you were playing? Has that always been
Speaker 1: a part of you or I wish I had have
Speaker 1: known that as a player, I tell I think late
Speaker 1: in my career playing for pat Riley and listening to
Speaker 1: him talk, I always thought I had bought in. I
Speaker 1: really did. As a player, I always thought, man, I'm
Speaker 1: a player that had bought in, and then when you
Speaker 1: played from pat Riley, he asked for more. Uh. And
Speaker 1: when you buy into that, you realize you really never
Speaker 1: bought in in the past. And once you do that,
Speaker 1: you understand what that looks like. Um, it sounds like
Speaker 1: pat Riley's a name that you could put on a
Speaker 1: list of people who have inspired you or influenced you.
Speaker 1: Who are some other people it could be within basketball
Speaker 1: outside of parents. Obviously, my dad was a cop, you know,
Speaker 1: uh in Chicago. You know, he was in the era
Speaker 1: of community cops. You know. He was the basketball coach,
Speaker 1: football coach, baseball coach. People would bring people by just
Speaker 1: so he could sit and talk to him about life,
Speaker 1: you know, he was. He was very important in the
Speaker 1: community I grew in. UH. And my mom is was
Speaker 1: my favorite. I mean she was very religious as similar
Speaker 1: line worker, you know, but she had this thing him
Speaker 1: both about no victims. You know, you're never going to
Speaker 1: be a victim. I don't care what they did, just
Speaker 1: keep keep it going. He was a big believer and
Speaker 1: keep it moving. I could you couldn't. You just could
Speaker 1: not come in and blame something in my household wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna happen. It was your fault because it happened. Now
Speaker 1: move on. That was my parents. But then I had
Speaker 1: great coaching. I had Larry Brown as a coach, Mike
Speaker 1: Ritzello as a coach, Rick Magaris and now McGuire. I'm
Speaker 1: the luckiest player to play because I never I always
Speaker 1: played for great coaching, and I think all that stuff
Speaker 1: is what probably formed my thoughts and that have all
Speaker 1: some of these influences inspire and inform docs visions for
Speaker 1: the Sixers. Understandably, having just accepted the gig a few
Speaker 1: days earlier and not having had a whole lot of
Speaker 1: time to dive deep into personnel and film, he didn't
Speaker 1: want to make any hard fast commitments when we spoke,
Speaker 1: but he did have some initial thoughts, and we began
Speaker 1: by looking at the franchises two Cornerstone All Stars Joel
Speaker 1: Ebad and Ben Simmons, who last February when the Clippers
Speaker 1: were in town, Doc likened to the lakers former Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame tandem of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson.
Speaker 1: I feel like I heard some people bring this up
Speaker 1: with you already, about the comments you made about Ben
Speaker 1: and Joel and the Magic and Kareem semi comparison. You know,
Speaker 1: I did it for because it was more about who
Speaker 1: they are as as as far as personality, Like I thought,
Speaker 1: imagine Kareem. You couldn't pick two more different human beings.
Speaker 1: Kareem rarely spoke, you know, very quiet, very analytical player
Speaker 1: in some ways, did not want to play fast break,
Speaker 1: wanted to walk the ball up the floor, wanted you
Speaker 1: to wait for him and then got down you throw
Speaker 1: it to him. And then you have Magic who wanted
Speaker 1: to fly down the floor, who had personality and joy
Speaker 1: and smile and wanted to play at a fast pace
Speaker 1: through behind the backback. I mean they were You couldn't
Speaker 1: have had two more opposite players that fit perfect. And
Speaker 1: that's the point. That's why I made it. Yuh oh, No,
Speaker 1: you can be completely opposite games and you could absolutely fit.
Speaker 1: And that was that was what I was the point
Speaker 1: I was trying to make it, and I'll admit it. Two.
Speaker 1: When I was listening to the introductory press conference, you
Speaker 1: have like I didn't think of Ben and Joel in
Speaker 1: terms of all when they played together they win sixty
Speaker 1: five percent of their games. I mean, maybe sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just that simple Obviously there's a lot of more layers
Speaker 1: to it, but it's that simple in some ways, like
Speaker 1: we we we we started dissecting these guys to the
Speaker 1: point where we forget what they do. Great. You have
Speaker 1: two guys that whenever they play together when sixty five
Speaker 1: percent of the games and all you hear about is
Speaker 1: what they don't do. Uh, And that's insane to me.
Speaker 1: You can score one hundred and thirty five points in
Speaker 1: the game and all you hear about is that Ben
Speaker 1: didn't take a three. I thought that the idea was
Speaker 1: to score a lot of points as a team, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know that they were style points. You know
Speaker 1: that if certain this guy had this many points. I
Speaker 1: don't care how we score. I just know we need
Speaker 1: to and so that's my focus with this team. You
Speaker 1: and Joel went to Basketball Without Borders together a few
Speaker 1: years ago. How did you guys? What was that? Basketball
Speaker 1: without pas out borders is something every person that is
Speaker 1: involved in NBA needs to find time to do. It
Speaker 1: was life changing. It's amazing to go watching Joel over
Speaker 1: there and just all the African born players over there. Uh.
Speaker 1: That part was amazing, the love that they get. But
Speaker 1: more important importantly, it's this country that wants to find
Speaker 1: their way through basketball. It was it was really powerful.
Speaker 1: I actually ran a play by Joel. You know, my
Speaker 1: brain is on a lot too much, as my coaches
Speaker 1: would say, and I was watching these kids play and
Speaker 1: I saw somebody do something. I grab Joel say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to try something out. I want to what
Speaker 1: do you think if we did this in a game.
Speaker 1: He started looking at me laughing, and that was really
Speaker 1: my first time meeting him. That's gonna be the craziest
Speaker 1: thing as a head coach, because you have to think,
Speaker 1: even if you're on the other side, well, what if
Speaker 1: I ever got a chance to work with this guy? Right,
Speaker 1: you think it all the time. What if I get
Speaker 1: a chance to coach this guy? Or even that you
Speaker 1: just see, men, this guy can do this. You know
Speaker 1: what if he did this? You know it never turns off.
Speaker 1: How much have you even been able to start to
Speaker 1: think about stylistic things on the court, offensively, defensively and
Speaker 1: what you see a lot? You know I have because
Speaker 1: I had to think about taking the job. But that's
Speaker 1: where it stops. So I've watched a little film. I
Speaker 1: will admit to that probably the only one is watching
Speaker 1: film right now. But other than that, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: yet how we're gonna play. I just know I have
Speaker 1: goal now that offensive defensive goals. I think we're nineteenth
Speaker 1: in offense last year. We can't be that, and when
Speaker 1: I think, we have to be in the top seven
Speaker 1: and how we get there is what we have to
Speaker 1: do next. Just as I'm curious when you watch film
Speaker 1: do you look at Are you a good tape guy?
Speaker 1: Do you like to watch good tape bad taper? Stuff
Speaker 1: in between? Well, in golf, I like to watch my
Speaker 1: bad swings. In basketball, I'd like to watch both. I
Speaker 1: love watching good in basketball because it shows me what
Speaker 1: they're capable of, but bad because it shows me their habits, tobias.
Speaker 1: You referenced him earlier. What do you think worked when
Speaker 1: he was in LA with you guys? He put up
Speaker 1: some terrific numbers. I gave freedom number one. I'm a
Speaker 1: big believer in freedom, because with freedom comes from actually more.
Speaker 1: You're more accountable to your teammates. If I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you the freedom, then you can't lose that by
Speaker 1: taking bad shots and playing the wrong way. I think
Speaker 1: I also, I thought I really got him to unsaid
Speaker 1: who he was what he was, and once he bought
Speaker 1: into that, it was easy for him to play free
Speaker 1: because he knew his shots, his way, and we allowed
Speaker 1: him to do it. Have you it sounds like you've
Speaker 1: kept in touch with him a little bit, but have
Speaker 1: you followed what he's been doing off the court since
Speaker 1: he left you guys, Not to suggest that he didn't
Speaker 1: do it in previous stops, but at least here with us,
Speaker 1: we've seen front and center how he's really taken leadership
Speaker 1: by the horn. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I didn't
Speaker 1: know if he was a leader or not because we
Speaker 1: had such a transient team. I guess it would be
Speaker 1: the best way because people were going in and out
Speaker 1: of the door. But I know he wanted to be,
Speaker 1: and so that's the start. I'd love to hear that
Speaker 1: another leader within the seventy sixers organization, Elton brand and
Speaker 1: hiring Doc Rivers marked the culmination of his first coaching search.
Speaker 1: It's hard to argue with the outcome as Brandon the
Speaker 1: Sixers were able to land the second winningest active head
Speaker 1: coach in the NBA. Brandon Rivers cross paths a handful
Speaker 1: of time times as players and coach, respectively on opposite sidelines,
Speaker 1: but now they're together, entering into a pivotal partnership. Something
Speaker 1: I spoke to Elton about was he said to me,
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna butcher this story, but he remembered when
Speaker 1: he was playing at some point during his career, like
Speaker 1: he was passing by you on the sideline and you said,
Speaker 1: like lighting up, or like have some fun or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um, tell me in your words, what relationship
Speaker 1: did you get them up? A relationship with Alton when
Speaker 1: I don't know Elton well until you know, we're getting
Speaker 1: to know each other. But that's a true story of
Speaker 1: watching them on the floor, and he just looked so mad.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was late in my career and
Speaker 1: I was just starting to coach, and I was like,
Speaker 1: enjoy it, man, that I it's a great game. I
Speaker 1: do think we lose light of that. You know, I
Speaker 1: see our players now not having fun. I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: competing as a player, there's there's nothing better. There's nothing
Speaker 1: better than a hard, just nasty, fought out game of competition.
Speaker 1: I don't even call it basketball. I call it a
Speaker 1: game of competition. And um, you know, to the victors
Speaker 1: goes to spoils and and if you know that while
Speaker 1: you're in the competition, you'll play harder. The symbolism of
Speaker 1: black general manager, black head coach. What does that mean
Speaker 1: to you? Means a lot? Um. You know when I
Speaker 1: when I leave this place, um, and decide to go
Speaker 1: off to some far away golf course. Um. My goal
Speaker 1: is to be said that Elton brand is the best
Speaker 1: gem in sports. That's my goal. Why is that? I
Speaker 1: think it's important I do It's I take it seriously. Um.
Speaker 1: We don't have a lot of black gems or black
Speaker 1: front office people. Um. And if he's successful, then someone
Speaker 1: else can be. Uh he's successful, then uh, we'll have
Speaker 1: a woman. It's a gym. Uh didn't We gotta just
Speaker 1: take away the fear of that. Um. And So I'm
Speaker 1: I really want helping to do well. I think it's
Speaker 1: my job to help him and I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to do that. Give us a sense. I know that
Speaker 1: you said you haven't been able to dive too deep
Speaker 1: into XS and o's yet, But do you have a
Speaker 1: timeline in mind by like, let's say next week, I
Speaker 1: want to be here and by the end of the month,
Speaker 1: I want to be there. That's a good question. I
Speaker 1: want to have my coaching staff in place. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be hard. That means Elton is going to be on
Speaker 1: the call talking to agents and that's not anything I
Speaker 1: would suggest do, But so that would be my first
Speaker 1: goal is to get the staff in place by Friday.
Speaker 1: I would have talked to probably by tomorrow. I want
Speaker 1: to have at least talk to everybody by phone. And
Speaker 1: then my next step is I'm gonna start flying around
Speaker 1: where these guys are. I've already talked to Al about
Speaker 1: going to Atlanta. That's where he lives in the off season.
Speaker 1: Just sitting out at the dinner table, man talking basketball,
Speaker 1: talking vision. I think they have to see a vision,
Speaker 1: and my job is to show them that vision. Two
Speaker 1: things to follow up on their first reaching out to
Speaker 1: players in the immediate See now, I mean, obviously we're
Speaker 1: in such a different world for so many different reasons.
Speaker 1: But in this COVID distance world that we're in, I mean,
Speaker 1: I figure, in a normal world, maybe you'd have a
Speaker 1: full roster here to welcome you on your first day.
Speaker 1: So what do you do now? It is harder. You know,
Speaker 1: the normal world. First of all, we would have had
Speaker 1: the big media scrum, but the player stuff is harder.
Speaker 1: You know. The two things that are harder right now
Speaker 1: that I have seen already taking a new job is
Speaker 1: due to COVID, everyone's gone, you know, and you have
Speaker 1: to find them. And I think that's that's that's very hard,
Speaker 1: and also due to COVID. Um, it's it's you don't
Speaker 1: know when the season starts. Uh, that's very difficult for
Speaker 1: a player and a coach to know when they ramp
Speaker 1: it up. And to circle back on your assistance in general,
Speaker 1: what do you look for in the staff. You've had
Speaker 1: some great assistance over the here. Um. I always say
Speaker 1: my staff, you have to be a fighter to be
Speaker 1: in my staff. If you or somebody who's telling me
Speaker 1: what I want to hear, it's not going to work
Speaker 1: with my staff. I want live debate. I do. And
Speaker 1: it's funny every time I bring in a new coach,
Speaker 1: they're very uncomfortable with it because I'm gonna challenge you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to disagree with you sometimes when I think
Speaker 1: you're right, I just think I need guys to tell
Speaker 1: me the truth. So whatever the date or general range
Speaker 1: of time is, let's imagine a great world in which
Speaker 1: You've got twenty thousand people in South Philadelphia. You've played
Speaker 1: in that environment, you've coached that environment. You get to
Speaker 1: where your guys want to go, Like, what do you
Speaker 1: what do you hope to bring this fan base? Consistent? Play,
Speaker 1: hard play, team play. There's nothing better for a fan.
Speaker 1: Then when you walk out on the floor, you say, dang,
Speaker 1: they play together, man, they play hard, man, they play together.
Speaker 1: If you can get that, you're in great ship. Get
Speaker 1: any of the fans getting your mentions on Twitter? I
Speaker 1: know you're on there. Did you check the mentions? Oliver?
Speaker 1: They it's funny. I am the worst Twitter user ever.
Speaker 1: And Instagram, you know, I got on my daughter works
Speaker 1: at CIA. She told me I needed to get on.
Speaker 1: I don't check anything. I mainly got on because I
Speaker 1: wanted to start creating social you know, education, and so
Speaker 1: I use it for that now. I actually i'll post
Speaker 1: something every once in a while. But as far as
Speaker 1: the mentions, the what's it likes, I think they are
Speaker 1: and I don't even know how you find those things
Speaker 1: because I don't one thing I don't do. I won't
Speaker 1: read any of the comments. I think that's a very
Speaker 1: healthy and I've heard that's very healthy, vital, valuable life
Speaker 1: insights from Doc Rivers that we should all internalize, apply
Speaker 1: and practice. Stay out of the mentions. But I'm the
Speaker 1: type of guy who cannot do as I say, and
Speaker 1: I go into the ventions. But it has seemed like
Speaker 1: for the last twenty four or forty eight hours, even
Speaker 1: going back to last week, the vibes are all good,
Speaker 1: really positive. People are excited to have Doc Rivers as
Speaker 1: the next head coach of the Sixers. And it's just
Speaker 1: one guy's opinion right here, but after listening to him
Speaker 1: talk for about thirty minutes on life, basketball and other
Speaker 1: such things, it is hard not to feel that way.
Speaker 1: Just a really exciting time for the Sixers to have
Speaker 1: someone of Doc rivers caliber and level of accomplishment in
Speaker 1: the fold as head coach. We're gonna have more reaction
Speaker 1: to the hiring of Doc Rivers on the seventy Sixers
Speaker 1: podcast network Feed in the days ahead, stay tuned for
Speaker 1: a conversation with Elton Brand, the man who was able
Speaker 1: to get Doc Rivers here to Philadelphia. And also we're
Speaker 1: going to have our Vote seventy six mini series. We
Speaker 1: have registration deadlines fast approaching within the local Delaware Valley
Speaker 1: area in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. So our hope is
Speaker 1: that some of these conversations shed light on resources you
Speaker 1: can use heading into the registration deadlines and of course,
Speaker 1: the November third election. I'm Brian Seltzer talked next Time
Speaker 1: You See It