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I Feel Confident Saying There’s a 0% Chance of the Sixers Moving to New Jersey
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Tom Bergeron at ROI-NJ.com wrote this in a story titled N.J. making serious push to lure Sixers to new arena in Camden –
The state of New Jersey is making a serious push to convince the Philadelphia 76ers to move to New Jersey and into a new arena that would be built in Camden, four people familiar with the discussions confirmed to ROI-NJ.
Discussions between top state officials and leaders from Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (which owns the team) have been ongoing for the last two months, the sources said.
The sources indicated that talks have picked up recently, in part because HBSE’s efforts to build a new arena in Center City Philadelphia have hit repeated roadblocks, despite the fact that the owners have indicated they would self-finance the $1.3 billion proposed project.
…
One source put it this way: “Maybe it’s a long shot, but sometimes long shots pay off in a big way.”
Yeah? I don’t see it happening. I feel confident in saying that there’s a 0% chance the Sixers move to New Jersey. If they do, I’ll quit Crossing Broad and go work at the Aramingo Avenue Wawa. Overnight shift.
My reasoning is twofold. One, we have David Adelman on the record saying the Sixers won’t go to New Jersey:
“I promise you that. Josh (Harris), David (Blitzer), and I have said from day one that this is a Philadelphia team and it’s not moving to New Jersey.”
Two, the biggest Sixers fan in the Commonwealth also runs the Commonwealth. That’s Governor Josh Shapiro, who I’m 99% sure had a basketball court at his election night headquarters. There is no way that Shapiro will allow the Sixers to leave Pennsylvania while he’s in Harrisburg. Not a chance, based on what he told us last summer:
“I’ll just say as a Governor, as a huge Sixers fan, I want to make sure the Sixers are here for a good, long while, and that they have a great facility to play in.”
If the Market Street arena plan is shot down, and New Jersey actually becomes a real threat, he’d step in and squash it.
He’d “shut that shit down,” as Negan from The Walking Dead once said:
If the Sixers go to New Jersey, there would be so many Ls to hand out. Adelman and HBSE would have to take a big L for breaking a promise. Shapiro would take a massive L. The City of Philadelphia would take an L. And it wouldn’t even necessarily be a W for Comcast if, hypothetically, the Sixers went over the river and ended up competing for live events there instead of in Center City. It would be more of a draw I’d say.
Nonetheless, we are waiting for the PIDC study to come out. Perhaps it will come out before we all die.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com