Earlier this offseason, Bob Myers went on the Game Over podcast with Max Kellerman and Rich Paul and pitched LeBron James coming to Philadelphia. I don’t know how much of a direct impact that had on King James selecting the Sixers in his free agent search, but consider me officially on board with any future podcast appearances Myers would like to make.
This week, Myers appeared on the Cousins podcast with Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady. While it won’t have the league-altering ripple effect of LeBron
choosing the City of Brotherly Love, we did receive a couple interesting nuggets centered around Jaylen Brown.
Here’s Myers on the early parts of the negotiations with Boston.
“You start hearing there was a possibility, and the job then became is this a real thing with Jaylen Brown? Is it a real thing? I think Brad Stevens is one of the most straight shooters in the league. So when you, when you work in the NBA as an executive, you usually have at least one or two, I don’t want to say transactions with every other GM. So you know, if I call Tracy, I go, hey, you want to make a deal? He might be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then he does, I mean, that’s like, I know not you’re not this way. But I, you have to understand like he’s honest, or he, he might tell me what I want to hear, or he might lie to me. This dude just might just lie. He lied to me two years ago, he’s going to lie to me again. That’s not Brad Stevens. So when Brad Stevens, um, responded with, what are you offering? Then you knew that there was a shot. Yeah. And so then it becomes 50 conversations, um, towards one, both organizations did a great job not leaking that, which is impossible. That’s literally impossible.”
The first job of an executive is to make the calls, but the harder job is to be able to sniff out during a conversation when there’s a real opportunity, which Myers describes here. It was one thing to trade for Brown, but the Sixers getting him for the eventual package they used has to be seen as a huge coup. That’s all on Mike Gansey, Myers, and whoever else was a part of the discussion from the Sixers’ side recognizing how highly motivated Boston actually was to move on from Brown. Also, the trade announcement did come completely out of left field, so Myers makes a good point that both sides kept an airtight lid on all those conversations.
Myers also described his first interaction with Brown following the trade:
“We needed an edge, and I think Jaylen Brown sets an edge. To win a championship, you need guys that are of that ilk, that are comfortable being uncomfortable… I talked to him the day after [the trade] and said ‘don’t ever underestimate that you are a champion. And that there is power in that, so use that with this team.’ And I said, we need you to lead, so I’m going to ask you to lead.”
I don’t think we can talk speak highly enough about the benefits in bringing in two guys with the “been there, done that” pedigree of Brown and James. That’s two guys with multiple NBA Finals appearances each who are among a group of only 37 individuals to ever win a Finals MVP award. There’s basically no situation the Sixers can go through that they haven’t already seen and overcome. For a Sixers core group that has been repeatedly stymied by the second round of the playoffs, that’s a huge boon.
Be sure to check out the whole interview on Cousins. I, for one, am happy to soak up any content related to this Sixers’ dream offseason.
