Sixers

Ranking the Top 10 Daryl Morey Stories from his Sixers Tenure

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: May 13th, 2026 · 10:10 AM EDT

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Sixers President of Basketball Operations Daryl Morey is OUT, fired by Josh Harris and David Blitzer on Tuesday evening. He was here for six seasons in which the team failed to get past the second playoff round despite winning 50+ games twice and earning the #1 seed in 2021.

Nick Nurse will remain while Bob Myers leads the search for the new player-personnel executive, and hopefully that person will be as good for irreverent sports blogging as Morey was.

Morey was the type of guy who was on social media and plugged in with new media. He said some really funny and goofy stuff and was always good for entertainment along the way, so we rank the following as our top 10 Morey stories during his Philly tenure:

1. James Harden Calls Daryl Morey a Liar, Refuses to Be Part of Same Organization
2. Who Do You Think Ate More Baconators – The Cuz, or Daryl Morey?
3. Daryl Morey’s Night Ruined By Girls in Yoga Pants
4. I Always Knew Daryl Morey Had Great Taste in Women
5. Daryl Morey Rips the “Overrepresented” and “Shameless” Boston Media
6. Daryl Morey Says “Ball Sack” on the Radio
7. Daryl Morey Dunks on Howard Eskin at Introductory Press Conference
8. No Chance Howard Eskin Knows Why Daryl Morey Called Him “Trent Crimm”
9. Armed with Peanuts GIF, Daryl Morey Implies that Keith Pompey’s Recent Tobias Harris Reporting is Fake News
10. Daryl Morey Doesn’t Want You to Forget that the Sixers Had the 3rd-Best Odds to Win the Championship

The James Harden thing has to be #1 because it’s not every day that a superstar player goes to China to tell a bunch of kids that the Sixers President of Basketball Operations is a scum bag:

“Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of. Let me say that again: Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of.”

That was pretty much the end of the road for Harden, who wound up in Los Angeles in a trade that brought back Marcus Morris, Nic Batum, Robert Covington, KJ Martin, and some draft assets.

The second story I think has to be the Baconators, because the photo makes me laugh so hard. Wendy’s was a 97.5 the Fanatic sponsor at the time, and Anthony Gargano was interviewing Morey at the Sixers’ training complex. Choonis took a picture in which you can see a stack of burgers on the table:

Dunno what it is about this photo. Maybe Morey kind of looking downward, thinking about lunch (presumably).

#3 on the list? I think you have to go with yoga pants. The background is that someone stumbled upon a Twitter account called “Girls in Yoga Pants,” which was followed by both Morey and Howard Eskin. No shame in the game. If you’re a straight male you probably appreciate @girlsinyogapant. Morey was a good sport about the whole thing, and laughed along with it, sharing this tweet when a yoga pant photo failed to materialize:

@CrossingBroad night ruined pic.twitter.com/B7duEAn9rs

— Daryl Morey 🗽🏀 (@dmorey) August 13, 2022

At #4, I went with I Always Knew Daryl Morey Had Great Taste in Women, when he liked an Instagram photo of Ke$ha showing basically her entire butt while standing outside in the snow. We thought it was just Daryl being Daryl, like another yoga pant thing, but we were later told that Daryl and his family have been friends with Ke$ha for a long time.

#5 is Daryl ripping the “shameless” Boston media, which was long overdue at the time. This was in January of 2023, when future MVP Joel Embiid was snubbed as an All-Star Game starter. There was a lot of Embiid/Jokic stuff going on back then, and Morey was weaponizing GIFs and memes against the national media. That triggered Zach Lowe, who said in March that people who disagree should “not yell and scream like someone voting for the guy that’s not on your team is a fucking moron….I am specifically talking about people like Daryl Morey, who has frankly been juvenile on Twitter.“

#6 I went with the Ball Sack story, when Ben Simmons was rumored to be going to Sacramento for Tyrese Halliburton and others. Morey told Mike Missanelli that most of the Twitter accounts that peddle in rumors aren’t worth following, then he mentioned that a trade was tweeted out by “Ball Sack Sports” and implored people not to treat those types of tweets seriously. It was just funny to hear him say that outright on live radio.

The Howard Eskin stuff goes 7th and 8th for us. Not sure you recall Daryl’s introductory presser, when he dunked on King after a meandering question about the Sixers’ core:

The other story was when Morey called Eskin “Trent Crimm,” a Ted Lasso reference that Howard didn’t get. There was a bunch of comedic jabbing between these two over the years before Morey’s firing, which Howard sort of, kind of, unofficially had first. He didn’t say outright that Morey had been fired, but he was out in front of the story and should have been credited by ESPN.

Ninth, we go back to the summer of 2023, when Keith Pompey reported that the Suns were putting together a three-team deal to acquire Tobias Harris. He later reported that the Suns ended the pursuit as the Sixers decided to keep Harris on the team. That resulted in a tweet from Hoops Reference and GIF response from Morey, showing Peanuts character Charlie Brown whiffing completely while trying to kick a football. The suggestion was that the report was completely inaccurate:

pic.twitter.com/tuNfPLbnm3

— Daryl Morey 🗽🏀 (@dmorey) June 26, 2023

And finally, at #10, Daryl Morey made sure to let everyone know that even after a terrible 2024-2025 season, when they were wracked with injuries and missed the playoffs entirely, that the Sixers had great odds entering the season. He always seemed to put a lot of stock into that type of stuff, which was meaningless. Nobody wanted to hear about that at the time, they wanted to know how the team was going to improve and what tangible steps were going to be taken to get to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years.

But anyway, we thank Morey for his service to Philadelphia, and his contribution to irreverent sports blogging.