Every year, when the Sixers exit the playoffs in embarrassing fashion, Philly sports fans rip Josh Harris and ownership, offering various opinions from “sell the team” to “the Process failed” to “he cares more about his football team” and whatever else we rehash perennially.

Let’s start by asking a simple question – What makes for good sports ownership? 

Well, most importantly, you need to provide the necessary resources to compete at the highest level.

To that end, the Sixers have:

  • a state-of-the-art practice facility
  • a title-winning head coach
  • a veteran general manager
  • a quality arena (while trying to build their own)
  • a robust operations and scouting staff
  • investment in data and analytics
  • a properly run G League team
  • a 19-person athlete care and culinary staff, complete with a fucking sous chef and dietician

Looking at that list, the follow-up question is this – what do the Sixers not have, that ownership needs to provide? From an operational standpoint, there’s not much. They’ve got all of the requisite things that a professional sports team needs to compete. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago this team had no practice facility, no analytics people, none of that investment. Rodney Carney and Jason Kapono were going over Eddie Jordan’s ATO plays at PCOM.

The second thing that good ownership needs to provide is a strong and consistent culture. This is the “emotional intelligence” side of owning a sports franchise, which is what Jeffrey Lurie and John Middleton have successfully accomplished in recent years. Middleton will walk around Citizens Bank Park and mingle with fans. He’ll actively play a role in recruiting guys like Bryce Harper and speak openly and honestly with the media. That, in addition to spending a ton of money, gives off the impression that he really cares and really wants to win. It lands with the fan base. Then it creates a rolling stone of sorts, a round rock that snowballs and makes other guys want to play for you and play for a fan base and city that’s committed to winning. It’s the idea of building something attractive to potential free agents and draft picks as well. You’ve seen it at NovaCare going on three decades now.

This is where Sixers ownership arguably comes up short, at least from an optics perspective. Josh Harris is simply not a charismatic guy. He’s not a great public speaker, and so while he’s at the games and standing along the sidelines, this city just hasn’t connected with him or David Blitzer in the same way it’s connected with other guys, local or not, like Boston native Lurie.

The thing about Harris that you hear more than anything is this allegation that he cares more about his new football team than the Sixers. Why? Because he’s from Maryland? Because football is bigger than basketball? Nobody seemed to give a shit about Harris owning the Devils, did they? Is it because NBA fans and NHL fans don’t overlap significantly, or is it because concurrent Devils ownership had no tangible negative impact on Sixers operations? I think it’s a little bit of both.

If we get to a point where the Sixers are demonstrably taking a back seat to the Commanders, which, by the way, has 20 limited partners and is not actually an HBSE property, then the gripes will be valid. Harris will deserve all of the ire and vitriol. But it’s flimsy right now to suggest that the Harris football team is compromising anything that the basketball team is doing. They didn’t lay off 20 Sixers scouts to hire 20 Commanders doofuses. For all intents and purposes, the Devils, Commanders, and Sixers all have the necessary tools to compete in their respective leagues.

The other thing you hear is that Harris and Blitzer only care about growing their investment and making money. Again – hard to prove, but also an exercise in mutual exclusivity. Franchise values are soaring regardless of wins or losses, so the pragmatic way to look at this is that ownership wants to win and wants to see their portfolio grow at the same time. Case in point: when you remodeled your kitchen, did you do it just to increase the value of your house? No, you did it to enjoy the kitchen AND make your house worth more when you go to sell. It goes back to the philosophy that more than one thing can be true.

I’m not saying HBSE is the greatest ownership group in the world, so don’t get it twisted. I’d rank them 3rd or 4th in Philly right now, depending on how you view Comcast. Lurie and Middleton are 1 and 2, in whatever order, then Comcast/HBSE, and Jay Sugarman is dead last. But a lot of the complaints people have about HBSE seem to be nebulous, i.e., “Josh Harris just bought a new team so now he doesn’t care about this team.” It’s certainly possible that it’s true, but unless we have internal budgeting documents, or Harris lobotomy results, it’s gonna be hard to prove.

If you want to kill Harris for letting the NBA walk all over the team at the tail-end of the process era, that’s a good gripe. Colangelo was a disaster, they had the gap year before Daryl Morey, Doc Rivers stunk, etc. Those are things you can kill ownership for, for making the wrong hires and wrong decisions, but in my mind it’s just a general lack of everyone not being good enough. Is ownership to blame for the Sixers choking against the Celtics last year? You’d probably blame the players first, coach second, and maybe Morey third. How much of that falls on ownership, I’m not sure, but when the Phillies and Eagles bomb in the playoffs, we’re killing Nick Sirianni, Rob Thomson, Howie Roseman, Dave Dombrowski, and the players, not Middleton and Lurie.