The Takeover Thread - Duchatelet Finally Sells (Jan 2020)

I follow the Sixers (and all Philadelphia teams having spent some time there when I was in college) pretty closely. Harris is not a great owner, but hes also not a bad owner and appears willing to spend money, though the NBA is hugely profitable. He is on record as saying he is willing to go well into the luxury tax to keep the 5 stars the Sixers put together this year.

He (and the full ownership team) are weak though. They appeared to fully embraced an analytical approach, and hired Sam Hinkie as GM from Houston in 2013. He then tore the team down and focused on acquiring draft picks and other assets while not prioritizing winning, which improved draft position and allowed the team to try out players and find a couple of diamonds in the rough.

The league didn't like that the Sixers were so blatantly tanking, which is allowed within the rules and put pressure on ownership to hire basketball lifer Jerry Colangelo to work "alongside" Sam. Sam felt that he was undermined, sent ownership an incredible resignation letter which was later leaded (its long but fascinating)  and rode off into the sun in spring 2016. Colangelo then hired his son Bryan a day later after an "exhaustive search". Colangelo junior was basically a disaster and aside from getting the no brainer number one pick right in 2016 didn't really make the most of the position Hinkie left him in, and he resigned in 2018 after it emerged that "his wife" was managing a number of anonymous twitter accounts.

The fruits of Hinkies labours started to pay off in 2017/18 as the star young players (Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons) started to mature (and were actually healthy for the first time) and the team made the playoffs for the first time in years. They  repeated that again this year, under new GM, former player Elton Brand who made a number of in season moves to push the team forward into a win now mood, putting pressure on the team and coach. Rumours started to come out that the ownership group was going to fire the head coach unless the team made it all the way to the NBA finals. They eventually were defeated in game 7 of the second round on a last second shot to a very good Toronto team and ownership changed their mind on the coach because of fan backlash.

They made a series of decisions over the past few years that indicate they care more about what people think of them than anything else. They don't have a real plan for winning and are lucky that they drafted two young superstars. If Harris bought CHarlton it would be a massive upgrade on RD but he wouldn't be the perfect owner by any stretch. The key would be whether he would be willing to invest and offset Charltons losses. That is true of most owners.