With new leadership, I take it very seriously. The city has a passionate fan base. This is a blue-blood organization, and so to get put in this position is a privilege. It's an honor. I view myself as a steward to the fan base, and I take that very seriously. I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think Josh and David Blitzer and HBSC were not serious about winning and weren't committed to winning. Again, I view these things as great challenges. These are great responsibilities to be in these chairs, but also not easy. And I know we have challenges ahead. I spent yesterday with the existing members of the basketball front office in Chicago. Elton Brand is there today with the group. We've got a lot of work to do. And we know that the 22nd pick in the draft. Time to get to work. We're less than 48 hours though away from this change. So, I have some work to do and I look forward to doing that. And again, you know, what I would say is when you look at the NBA, there's a few places that stand out as far as the history of the organization, the care of a city, and this is certainly one of them, and I'm excited to kind of move forward in this role.
Gina Meiselle from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Bob, just can you right here? Sorry. Can you sort of detail just sort of what qualities you are most looking for as you begin this search, what you're going to prioritize and what you feel like are the what this organization needs in that type of leader at this point in time.
Gina. Yes. You know, I'm a big believer in character and leadership, and I'm looking for a person that embodies those things, but there's many characteristics under that that I believe kind of qualify in making a modern GM a success. There's front-facing responsibilities. There's responsibilities of managing star players, there's responsibilities of managing up to ownership, there's contract negotiations, there's draft process, there's evaluating analytics, there's medical staff. You go down the line and these jobs have an enormity to them. So, I'm looking to find someone that can check as many of those boxes as possible, but also raise their hand and say, you know what, I'm actually not good in this space. I'm going to need some support because the misnomer about these jobs is I had some success in my previous job, but it wasn't me by myself. There are teams of people that make a team and an organization successful. So, making sure we have the right person to lead them, but also the right people underneath them, which is important. And the person that is going to get this job, like I said, I hope they check all those. They won't. It doesn't exist. How can we support them in roles that they don't have?
Bob Cooney from On Patterson. What are some of the biggest obstacles that you see for this organization right now going into next year's, you know, immediately and then some of the things that are beneficial to the next president of basketball operations for this organization.
What was your name? You said Bob Cooney. Okay. Nice to meet you. I think look, there'll be one happy team at the end of this season. Just one. There'll be 29 teams that didn't get the job done. We're one of them. We're one of the 29 that didn't win the championship this year. Our season's over. And so you have to acknowledge the why of that and how did we get here? Right? So there's some good moments. There's some good things about this organization and there's some things we need to get better at. And some of those things, Bob, we can fix internally and some of them we can't. And so we have to be honest about who we are and why we came up short because you only do these jobs. You only take these I only take these jobs to win a championship. I think players, if they're being honest, only play to win a championship. I didn't hear any players say, 'Well, we'd had a great season and this is exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to get swept in the second round.' Nobody's saying that. I'm not saying he's not saying that. So why did it happen and what can we do? And again, that involves an intense evaluation process. Getting to know the players, getting to know the coaches, getting to know what works better, what can we change and sometimes those solutions are ours to control and sometimes they're not. Having done this job previously, sometimes I could get the team better internally and sometimes I couldn't and then you have to make changes externally. So that's our job. I think there are some positives and there's some things that are challenges that we have to work through, but all of it has to be evaluated starting with now we've got a 22nd pick in the draft. We got to get that right. And then there's free agency. And then there's an offseason program and all those things matter to get us to where we want to go.
Tony Jones from the Athletic. One of the adages, an adage in the NBA is that it's doable to go from bad to good, but it's very, very difficult to go from good to championship contender. You guys have gone from bad to good. You've accomplished that. What is it going to take for you guys to go from, you know, second round knockout to a championship contender? And why haven't you guys done it?
Tony, I believe that. I believe that adage because when you're bad, you can try anything and if it doesn't work, you're still bad. But if you're good, you have to risk something to go to great. So that's why it is harder to go from good to great because you risk something. You risk making a mistake and falling back to bad. When you're good, you're scared to do that or you're more resistant because you say if it doesn't work, we're going to be bad. When you're bad, if it doesn't work, we're still bad. But yes, that is the nuance and challenge of any team, right? So, there's some teams, there's a lot of teams, we made it to the Elite 8, you might say, well, you know, you don't get really celebrated for that in this business. Nor do I believe should you. So, then you say, what do we need to do to get to great? I've actually been lucky enough to see what great looks like. But that's not easy, right? It's not easy. So, it's a hard look at everything. It's a hard look at whoever we hire and we'll place it on them. It's a hard look at what I've experienced and what I know that makes a championship team. But it's also a question to our players. Do you want to get uncomfortable? Because it takes a great level of uncomfortability to win a championship. Do we have that? Do you want that? Do we want that? Do you want to take that responsibility on? Are we satisfied? I know I'm not. I know he's not. And our players better not be satisfied with four to six second round playoffs. Yeah. Yes, it's not easy to make the playoffs, but nobody plays this game to make the playoffs. In fact, 16 teams make the playoffs. More than half the league. That's not anybody's goal. The goal is to win a championship. So, I say these things. But I also want to say clearly how hard it actually is and how hard it will be. There is no wave a wand, me sit up here at a press conference and talk for 10 seconds and that's the answer to fixing everything and we're off. It is not. It requires a ton of work and so whoever we bring into this process including myself including our staff our players has to be committed to that in a very big way and that means sacrificing time and energy and putting everything you have into this and we're going to demand that. I'm going to demand that of whoever we hire to do that, myself, because I just don't know how to not do it. But we need our players to want that too and that's our challenge to put on them.
Bob, this is David Murphy from the Philadelphia Inquirer. In this process, who will be setting the philosophy big picture-wise? Are you going into the search saying this is what we think this roster can become? For instance, you know, early in Steph Curry's career, there was questions about whether to trade him or not. You know, there's a person saying no, this guy is going to be a guy that we build around and a championship roster will be developed around him. Are you looking for someone who will answer that question themselves or is that something that you're going into it kind of having looked at this roster knowing what general direction it needs to go in?
Dude, I'm a big believer in whatever the best answer is. Whoever comes up with that is the best answer. I don't care who says it. But it requires a lot of debate, a lot of conversation. I'll tell you what I'm looking for in a leader. Somebody that's committed to getting it done, to getting us there. And is aligned with myself, is aligned with Josh, is aligned with our expectations, our work ethic, our commitment, our competitiveness. If they want to make a big statement about what we need to do, I'll listen to that. I asked the staff last night that exists, what are you guys going to do? What do you think? A lot of different answers. And they said, what do you think? I said, I don't know the answer, but we're gonna figure out the answer. As far as like one specific thing, I never think, like I said, I've been fortunate enough to see how you win. I love Steph Curry. I love him. He got one finals MVP. It's not one person that wins championships. It's a team that wins and he would say that, too. And he doesn't care. He's got four NBA championships. That's what matters. It's not about anything else. It's about the team and that's we want as many people that I know the nature is to look at one person. It's never one person. It's a team of people. Whoever wins it this year, it won't be one guy. It'll be a team of people and we got to figure out what team we can put together that has an opportunity to do that.
To follow up on that. You have a roster right now that has two young guys who you mentioned who clearly are potential centerpieces and then you have two older kind of aging veterans who are also among the highest paid players in the league. You know, there's different ways to approach that. You know, do we build for the future around the two guys? Do we try to win next year? You know, thinking that we can get more out of the two old guys. That's kind of the philosophy that I'm referring to.
And that is David, that is the question. And if I had the answer to that question, I'd actually just do it. I don't have to tell you. I just do it or I look forward to partnering with leadership to get that answer. But you're asking the right question. But that's a question I think everybody's asking, right? Like how do you not and it's not to criticize an older player or praise younger player. It's about how do we get past the second round? How do we get further? But that's what makes the job hard. That's what makes it gratifying is figuring if it was easy, you know, it wouldn't be worth it. It's very hard to build these things and build them in the right way.
Hi Josh. Hi Bob. Crystal CBS Philadelphia. Bob, you mentioned that one of the responsibilities and things that you're looking for is someone who can manage our players. You also said you want them to be in alignment with Josh and yourself, which is understandable. And you just touched on this, but what is the dedication, if you will, to see the fulfillment of Joel Embiid and Paul George's contracts, and how much in alignment does the new president of basketball operations have to be with you guys on that? How big of a role does that play in who you select?
Again, not having interviewed anybody, that's a good question that I will ask them. How do you feel about our roster? Right? And I imagine I'll get different answers from different candidates and there'll be one answer or maybe a few that stand out and say that's really interesting. I didn't think about it that way. Or I might say what about this or what do you think we can do here? What do you view from the outside? Sometimes when you talk to candidates or people outside your organization, you get a different answer when you talk to people inside. There's a bias inside a building as far as outside. Somebody say, you know, actually I think this can work or I really like this guy or what if you played this way or what if you partnered these two guys? Again, I don't look at it though, and I want to speak for Josh, is whoever we hire. I'm not going to base it on the first thing they do, the first player. This is, if we get it right, this person will be here for a long, long time and make many decisions and hopefully many of the right decisions. But as far as near-term, yeah, those are questions I'll ask. May borrow your question. Just ask that question. How do you think this can work? And then I might say, 'What about this?' Josh might say, 'What about that?' The people that have been in the building might say, 'I think this.' I'm a big believer in a group. I didn't win four championships. I didn't do that. Our group did that. People did that. And I like that idea. Working in sports is the best thing because you're on a team. And so I look forward to building out someone that can lead that team and work with myself and certainly work with Josh.
And if I could just take you back to the trade deadline, Daryl admitted that he wanted to use the picks that he got for Jared McCain to get a player that could help him this year. It obviously didn't happen. He also said that they traded high for Jared McCain. In retrospect, what is your evaluation of that situation and his, if you will, emotional intelligence of how he came across when he said that?
Well, I'm not going to I like Daryl. I'm not going to disparage Daryl here today. I think he did a fine job and I think he's a good person and what I will say to your question and I understand why you asked it. Is that what I will tell you is that was a few months ago. Right now we have the 22nd pick. Our job is to get that right. We have three second round picks from it. I know you're not criticizing or asking question. We should be graded on the ultimate result of transactions like that. But I understand I made draft picks where we got an F right away 10 minutes after the draft. F. And I was like, how do they know it's an F? I mean, we guys even played. But your job and everybody's job is to react. I totally understand that. Our job is to make a trade. There'll be a reaction. It'll be positive or negative, but that trade isn't done. And our job is to make sure that on our end of the trade, we do a good job with drafting the best player at 22.
Bob, hi, Adamson from Philly Voice. Can you talk about what you envision your role here being with the Sixers specifically after this hire is made? Josh mentioned the idea of you and Nick and this hire working together and how that differs from what it has been since you started working with HBSC.
Yeah, I view taking the next few weeks, not sure how long it'll be to identify a day-to-day leader that'll have a lot of authority here, which they should. What they're going to get and our fans are going to get is them plus me. I won't be on the day-to-day level, but on the high level decision-making, which is being here at the draft, being here leading up to the trade deadline, being available for free agency discussions, free agency meetings, things like that. I'm going to be involved at that level. And I can tell you that I imagine, and this isn't saying this lightly, I'll be communicating with that person daily, if not five out of seven days a week. You know, why and I don't view that as a job because I want to. I want to hire somebody that I can work with. I want to hire somebody that Josh can work with. And most importantly, I want to win. And I think that I have had some experience in this space and if I have something to say, it's harder for me not to say it than say it. But that'll be my role and obviously continuing to work with Josh on all this very high level stuff. But I'm looking forward to kind of that role and you know, it's best part about working in sports is the competition. If you like competition, it's a great space to live in. But you got to deal with some pain. You got to deal with some loss. But when you win, it's all worth it. But that would be how I would characterize it.
We got to do a question for John. It's getting weird out here.
All right. I got one for you. Come on. It's okay. I got one for you. You've been through a lot with Joel Embiid. Unfortunately, there's uncertainty with him a lot of times in the playoffs with some unfortunate injuries. Do you feel he can be the centerpiece of a team that gets you over the hump to be a championship team with what he's gone through?
Yeah, look, I mean, all the good ones. Look, I think Jo like we win as a team, we lose as a team. Bob said it's not one player. I think putting all the focus on one player is the wrong place to be. I think that he's an important player on our roster and you know he's a warrior and you know he's also, you know, some of the things that you said are also true. So I think we're going to like get we're looking forward to welcoming back on our team.
Paul Liberty Ballers. Bob just with the draft coming up and it is so close and as you mentioned they're already kind of, you know, doing a lot of their prep. Do you want to get this person in place before the draft or is that something where if it doesn't happen, you're comfortable going with the scouting that's already been done and your kind of, you know, history as an executive?
Yeah, I think Paul, I'd like to have someone. I hope to have someone. But if it hasn't happened, that's okay, too. But the goal would be to have someone in place for the draft to get acclimated with the new group. But by the way, the group is working now. And whoever we hire, not sure who that will be, will likely possibly already be evaluating the draft from where they coming from. So, that's a benefit in some ways, but yeah, I'd like to and I hope to, but it'll be as much time as required to get the best person because again, sure, have someone by the draft, but the goal will be to have someone that's the right person for a long amount of time after that.
Hi Bob, hi Josh. Dave Ura from WIP KYW radio. Josh, you had talked about a lot of frustration, disappointment in your opening statement and your statement from the other day, understanding the fans frustration and warranted frustration. I'm curious taking you back to the end of the series. How did it feel for you sitting in that arena with all the Knicks fans that took over the building?
Yes, sir. Obviously, I didn't like it. I mean, it's our home court. I mean, we did everything we could, including buying tickets to keep the fans out. We geofenced and look it's not it's on us. I mean we were, you know, the fans supported us. And let's face it, we got swept. And so for that last game, you know, there were some Knicks fans in the arena. And so our job is to, you know, is to come back and win that series, right, next year. And so, I think that I didn't like it, but, you know, it gives me more focus and more orientation towards just sort of getting back to work and, you know, bringing in, I mean, again, like we have a four-time NBA champion here who's, you know, going to be overseeing basketball ops and that's a big deal. And so there's a recognition that, hey, you know, if we want to be, you know, this city's not going to be satisfied, we're not going to be satisfied unless we win an NBA championship. That's hard. There's 29 teams that want to There's 30 teams that want to do it. There's 29 other teams. They're all smart. And we need to be smarter. And so that's what this is about. It's about doing everything we can to move to the next level.
