Welcome to From the Inside, an audio diary hosted by Brett Brown. This weekly mini-series from the 76ers Podcast Network brings you exclusive insights and stories from inside the NBA's bubble told directly to you by the Sixers' head coach. Look for new episodes every Thursday or Friday from now through the end of the season. Search '76ers Podcast Network' wherever you get your podcasts to subscribe. Check out the first-person transcription of this week's episode below.
We've been in the bubble a month, and I feel like I've settled into a routine.It's sort of my nature when you get to wherever you're going to go, you try to figure stuff out immediately, like what's the environment, what's the parameters to expand sort of living in a hotel room and watching video tape? I mean people need to live. For me, I've uncovered an unbelievable routine where you can get up, and although it's a confined space, I get up really early. I get my run and walk in. There's access to a lake, which is connected to another lake through a canal. Each team has a pontoon boat that goes slow, but it lets you feel like you're not trapped and have sort of cabin fever. For me, I try to go out and make phone calls, you think, you try to clear your head. It has become part of my personal routine where you get space, peace, clear your head, and you're not feeling like you're in a tight bubble, and instead out in nature, which I love.
It's go-time now. With the seeding games here, everything is amplified. The reality that you're going to blink and the playoffs are going to be right on your doorstep is ever present, and we all feel it. Initially you come down here, and it's like a sophisticated basketball camp. You feel like you're back at college and there's a campus. You bump into people all the time. Now that the games are starting to be played in the regular season, and the playoffs are around the corner, the reality of the serious side, the kind of business side of the NBA season is here. Initially you didn't feel like that. You're all trying to figure out what the world looks like now as it relates to NBA basketball. I think the dust has settled, and you're starting to understand how you navigate our new living environment, and the reality that the playoffs are right around the corner.
At this point, not much with Joel surprises me. I wouldn't say [that] as quickly as I just did if I didn't feel his fitness base coming into the bubble was as good as it's ever been as it relates to starting a new season. I think that because of the work he put in, although he missed two of the scrimmages, for him to jump into the regular season in the way that he has because of that. We all get his talent level, but his fitness level was the thing that allowed him to dominate the way that he has dominated.
There is a committed, unified desire to make people aware of all of the issues with Black Lives Matter. The flashpoints that have happened over the past three or four months that have brought attention to this issue have galvanized the players and coaches, and you've seen it come together in a significant way here in the bubble from just an example of how we've decided to interact and be unified during a national anthem. There is a very sort of defined fraternity that you feel a part of just as a member of the NBA. It's heightened by the fact that we're all privileged to be part of an amazing fraternity and business model that we are. As it relates to the 76ers...you eat together, you live in the same building, you get on the same bus together, you have a restaurant you can go to and have team meals together. Everything is just available to you to be together, and there's still enough wiggle room where all of us like our space and privacy. I don't have any complaints of how this whole setup has happened. I feel like because of this environment the peripheral benefit of team stuff, togetherness stuff, interactions where you may not have it as much stuff is heightened. It really is an environment that can produce those opportunities.
The number one thing by a mile is continuing to learn how to play the team. There are so many bullets that have happened this year as it relates to health. Only 19 out of 65 games did you have your starting group. Do the math. It's a huge number where you didn't. We've test-driven Ben at a four man, then Ben with the ball a little more prior to his injury. My number one thing, and we're very close, is letting the dust settle on the best make-up. I believe that we'll go to a rotation of nine. I don't see it swelling up to 11. It could go to 10 based on foul trouble or match-ups. But that is no. 1. I could get into coach speak on parts of our defense or parts of our offense, but to me the bottom line, the starting point, is rotating different parts of the team.
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