PHILADELPHIA — He coiled his trim and wiry 57-year-old body, then uncoiled in a baseball swing. His right hand described the arc of an imaginary dinger.
“If you want to hit home runs,” Josh Harris said, “you gotta swing big.”
If nothing else, in the decade Harris has owned the 76ers, they’ve swung big.
Harris delivered his home-run analogy backstage Tuesday, after the introductory news conference for Harris’ latest Ruthian lash. Top-flight team builder Daryl Morey traded for future Hall of Fame guard James Harden to pair with MVP favorite Joel Embiid and play for future Hall of Fame coach Doc Rivers.
Like all of the the other big swings — Andrew Bynum, Sam Hinkie’s “Process,” Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, and “Bully Ball” — this one has every chance of missing. Harden is 33, he’s injured, he’s struggled in previous playoff runs, he’s having his worst season in a decade, he can opt out of his current contract after this season, and he just forced his way out of a second franchise in 14 months.
I asked Josh Harris as he sat at the interview table Tuesday: He’s whiffed badly four times before. What makes this big swing different?
His smile faded, his eyes dropped, he shook his head, and he cleared his throat. A celebration had turned into an interrogation. He answered.
“We have two great players to build around. We have a great coach in Doc Rivers. An unbelievable front office with Elton and Daryl. Our goal is to win a championship. We’re going to keep trying until we get there.”
All of the Sixers’ failures in the last decade fall at the feet of Josh Harris. He approved absurd strategies, hired unqualified lieutenants, allowed a culture of chaos to develop, and then ignored the dysfunction that developed. He attended to his other investments at Apollo Global Management and doubled his net worth to more than $5 billion, but his basketball team became, and remains, a punchline.
Harris has invested millions in Sixers facilities, technology, analytics, and sports science, but the Sixers haven’t advanced past the second round of the playoffs since Harris replaced Ed Snider as the basketball owner who cares more about his hockey team (Harris also owns the New Jersey Devils).
Still, a former 118-pound wrestler at Penn, Harris is nothing if not tenacious.
“There’s no straight lines to the top,” he said Tuesday.
Let’s review, then, the tortuous path on which Harris has led the Sixers — so far.
Yellow Brick Road
Harris is a private-equity savant with a degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, so he has deep Philly connections. He and his partners spent $280 million for the Sixers in July 2011. A year later they began to deconstruct it, like any other private-equity investment.
The next season Harris allowed desperate coach Doug Collins to trade Andre Iguodala, an All-Star and an Olympian, along with three other first-round picks for broken-down Lakers center Andrew Bynum. At Bynum’s introductory news conference, I asked Harris if he planned to sign Bynum to a maximum extension. Harris replied, in his best Cuba Gooding, Jr. impersonation: “Where do I sign? Show me the contract!”
Fortunately for Harris, there was no contract. Bynum had bad knees and never played a minute for the 76ers.
The next season Harris pivoted to The Process — a slash-and-burn plan predicated on building with affordable, high draft picks earned by losing games, on purpose, indefinitely. Of the eight players taken among the top 11 picks from 2013 to 2017, only Embiid remains, and Hinkie had tried to trade up and take Andrew Wiggins in 2014.
Nevertheless, Embiid and guard Ben Simmons, the 2016 No. 1 overall pick, looked like foundational pieces by the time Simmons began to play in 2017. The Sixers tried to complement Embiid and Simmons with shooters, such as JJ Redick, whom they overpaid. Twice.
They then traded for one season of Jimmy Butler in 2018-19, who first feuded with Embiid, then with Simmons. They also added Tobias Harris at the 2019 deadline. Butler left, they overpaid Harris, then tried to win in 2020 with Al Horford and something called “Bully Ball” while the rest of the league ran past them.
Now, it’s James Harden, with a bad hamstring and, in his last two stops, a bad attitude.
At least Josh Harris hired a strong front office to write the current chapter.
Who’s in charge
In 2013, after Collins quit, Harris needed a general manager. He hired Houston assistant GM Sam Hinkie, an analytics expert with scant management experience, gave Hinkie free rein, and watched over the next three years as a series of poor draft picks and worse oversight forced the NBA to step in and put NBA doyen Jerry Colangelo in charge. Hinkie soon quit, sent ownership a condescending, 13-page manifesto, and has not worked in the NBA since.
Jerry Colangelo hired his son, Bryan, who, as if to prove the evils of nepotism, turned out to be a petty, impotent Twitter addict who resigned in disgrace. Sixers coach Brett Brown served as GM for a summer while Harris & Co. cast about for a replacement before settling on Elton Brand, a former Sixers player whose front-office resume consisted of running the G League team ... for one year. Brand, a 17-year bruiser, authored Bully Ball.
Then, finally, fate favored Harris.
The Clippers fired Rivers after the NBA bubble playoffs in 2020. Morey quit in Houston. Harris pounced.
He paid Doc $8 million a year, gave Morey $10 million a year, and promised both of them he’d keep Embiid around as long as possible. Morey fished for Harden last year at the trade deadline and Houston wouldn’t bite, but a year later, with Harden pouting in Brooklyn and with Simmons pouting in Philly, the Nets swallowed the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
Or is it Harris just taking the bait again?
To his shame, Harris spent his first nine years of ownership ruining a once-proud brand that boasted Wilt, Dr. J., and Allen Iverson.
To his credit, Harris has big names in big spots. And, all along, he hasn’t just tried to make contact. He’s swung for the fences — and because of that, the Sixers are always, at the very least, big news.
