Sixers remain his focus, Josh Harris says, despite Commanders purchase

As Josh Harris walked up the staircase at the Sixers’ training facility Thursday to introduce his newest employee, you wondered if he knew where he was. Camden? Or still in Miami? Or was he in New York City yet?

It was a fascinating glimpse into the busy life of a rising sports mogul.

About an hour later he stood for a photo op beside new coach Nick Nurse and Sixers president Daryl Morey, both former basketball players. Harris is a wiry, 5-foot-6 inch former college wrestler and marathoner, and he’s 58. He looked tiny and unimportant next to them — again, fascinating, since Harris is becoming a titan of the sports industry.

Harris just led a group of investors in the pending purchase of his hometown Washington Commanders for $6.05 billion. Like most NBA and NHL owners, Harris operates in relative obscurity despite sitting bench-side at important Sixers games. No more. NFL owners never remain obscure.

Harris says he’s ready for it. All of it. As workers deconstructed the dais, he looked me in the eye and said:

“Look. I’m not [expletive] around.”

That’s been true for several years now, after a decade of messing around.

Harris fired coach Brett Brown in 2020 but soon found future Hall of Fame coach Doc Rivers unemployed, so he snagged him. A month later he hired Morey, an analytics pioneer and putative genius who had unexpectedly been fired as the Rockets’ GM, to be the Sixers’ team president. Now, having fired Rivers, Harris has landed Raptors coach Nick Nurse, four years removed from beating the Sixers as a rookie coach on his way to the NBA title — and the best candidate available.

“Nick was the coach we wanted,” Harris said during the news conference, with uncharacteristic bravado. Afterward, he was even more direct. He saw Nurse, and he got him. “I did what I could do.”

No, he’s not messing around.

Any hardcore sports fan already knows who Josh Harris is. He has owned part of the Sixers, his maiden purchase as a big-time sports player, since 2011. But he also has owned part of the NHL New Jersey Devils since 2013, and part of Crystal Palace of the Premier League since 2015. He owns parts of various minor-league teams, and he has made runs at the Mets, the Broncos, and Chelsea of the Premier League. He seeks to build a new arena in Philadelphia and a new stadium in D.C.

These have been his hobbies.

» READ MORE: Philly deserves a WNBA team. Josh Harris should help make that happen.

In 1990, Harris co-founded the private equity firm Apollo Global Management, just four years after graduating from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the same year he earned his MBA at Harvard. Apollo reported assets valued at just over $500 billion last year.

Harris’ personal diversification led to his retraction from operational responsibilities at Apollo last year and to form his own private equity company, 26North, a venture valued at $5 billion. He also sits on boards and he invests in real estate, and he has a wife and five children, upon whom, it is generally agreed, he dotes.

Super. But Philly fans are used to billionaire Jeffrey Lurie being on the sidelines at Eagles practice and in the locker room after every game, home and away, and Lurie won a Super Bowl five years ago and just went back. They’re used to billionaire John Middleton sitting in the stands at Phillies games, walking the concourses, conducting his informal customer surveys, and Middleton’s club won a World Series in 2008 and has been back twice since. They’re used to the late Ed Snider, overbearing but well-intended, bopping around backstage at Flyers games, trying to will them back to 1970s glory, and Snider’s club made it to the Stanley Cup Final in 2010.

The Sixers haven’t even sniffed a conference final since 2001.

Which leads to the obvious question for Philadelphia hoops fans:

Between the businesses, the billions, the soccer and hockey and the big boys in the NFL, how will Harris support the Sixers?

Delegation.

“I work by getting the most elite talent in the league,” Harris said. “That’s the model that’s worked for me over the years, in business and sports. Get those people, and ride with them.”

That hasn’t really worked with his basketball team.

Harris first empowered Sam Hinkie, and that led to a disastrous, three-year reign that began The Process. Harris empowered nepotism hire Bryan Colangelo, who botched the second chapter and left in disgrace after Burnergate.

The two years in limbo, from 2018 to 2020, when Elton Brand was promoted to GM and ran the team with coach Brett Brown, actually produced the best team since Harris arrived: The 2019 edition nearly beat Nurse and Kawhi Leonard, who advanced after their quadruple-doink prayer was answered in the conference semis.

» READ MORE: Just what kind of owner is Washington getting in Josh Harris? This is what he’s shown us.

This turned out to be competence by accidents.

Harris and his partners lately have been more attentive to the team. Hinkie and Brown were anonymous assistants elsewhere. Bryan Colangelo had been mentored by his father, Jerry, in Arizona, then was hired by Jerry after Hinkie’s fall in Philly led the NBA to install Jerry as the Sixers’ de facto president, but Bryan had been a failure in Toronto in between.

However, in 2020, Rivers and Morey were the most accomplished candidates on the market. He reportedly paid them as such: Rivers, five years and $40 million; Morey, five years and $60 million.

Harris watched them reach the Eastern Conference semifinals three times, lose, blame Rivers, and, Thursday, officially hired Nurse. Harris said that, all along, he seethed like the Philly faithful.

“This is really important to me,” Harris insisted. “I sweat the losses just like the fans do. Or more.”

More, you would hope. After all, Harris writes the checks.

How much of himself can Harris really give, especially since he just joined the most exclusive American cartel since the robber-baron railroaders of the 19th century?

The Commanders are a rotting mess, and Harris has already enlisted top-level members of his other companies to help clean it up. The NFL demands more of its owners than any of the other leagues. Raised in Chevy Chase, Md., Harris loved the local football team, which happens to be a chief rival of the Philadelphia Eagles.

“This is really important to me. I sweat the losses just like the fans do. Or more.”

Where does that leave the Sixers?

“Obviously, I’m much more involved with the Sixers now than anything else,” Harris said. “I’m not stopping until we win here.”

As he said it, a flock of well-dressed subordinates, some with multiple cell phones, swarmed around him, now turning him this way, now turning him that. He wore a blue blazer and cotton khakis, and he might have been an Ivy League guest speaker looking for stage left, except he probably owns the companies that make the blazer and the slacks.

» READ MORE: Who is Josh Harris? The Sixers managing partner is set to buy the Washington Commanders.

Harris often commutes to Philly from his New York office and residence by helicopter, dramatically landing atop the business offices at the Sixers’ two-building training complex, but the chopper was grounded Thursday. His plane from Miami had deposited him in Philly that unusually warm June afternoon: “I live on planes.” His air-conditioned car to New York was waiting in the sweltering parking lot.

There were bags under his eyes, but he was energetic and alert, and, after a firm handshake, he was ready to move on to the next thing. And the next. And the next.

“I don’t think I have any bandwidth issues,” he said. “I’ve never really been much of a sleeper.”