Philadelphia 76ers Collapse Could Be Good For New Jersey Devils

The other Josh Harris-David Blitzer franchise also needs a major overhaul.

The New Jersey Devils aren’t the only Josh Harris-owned franchise that’s in a state of flux. Honestly, the Philadelphia 76ers might be in an even worse spot. That’s saying something. The Devils were just forced to fire their head coach, fire their general manager, trade away their star player, trade away their captain, trade away one of the fan favorites, trade away as many players as is possible in one season, lose the last month of the season to a pandemic, (breaths), watches a season go to Hell only to have their biggest rival win the number-one overall pick, have their number-one overall pick have one of the worst rookie seasons for such a player in a decade, watch their prized defensive acquisition become more NHL spokesman than Norris Trophy candidate, a New York Post piece showing a hot mess that was their coaching search, a coaching hire that fell extremely flat, and seeing their 1st-round draft picks continue to fall down the board due to the success of the teams they traded with.

Sorry we made you relive that.

Anyway, the 76ers are in flux, showing that the way Harris and David Blitzer has been running these franchises isn’t working. One might argue that we’re happy we have owners who aren’t looking to move to the next available city and have plenty of money to keep the team solvent. There is no argument to say that Harris and Blitzer have done a “good job” running these franchises.

They did watch the value of these franchises skyrocket, so they have to be happy with their purchase. They bought the Devils back in 2013 for $320 million. Now, the team is worth $550 million. That’s 15th in the league according to Forbes. That’s an insane return on investment. Still nowhere near the return Harris and Blitzer got from the 76ers. They paid between $270 million and $290 million for the NBA franchise right before a lockout. Now, this franchise is worth an astounding $2 billion.

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It’s clear they are happy with their investment, but Harris and Blitzer are known for being sports owners over everything. They haven’t been able to get a lot of love for being owners. In seven years as Devils’ owners, and nine years as 76ers’ owners, they have two playoff series wins. In 16 total seasons, their teams have seen the second round twice and never made it past that.

The 76ers have a .390 win percentage with the 76ers. That has a lot to do with “The Process” that had them as one of the worst teams in sports for multiple seasons in order to gain draft capital. Obviously, if Markelle Fultz was instead Jayson Tatum things might be different. However, this is more than just luck. The 76ers spent years putting together a championship contender, and it did not work. The wrong people were making decisions, and the same thing hurt the Devils for years.

Hopefully, this is a learning experience for Harris. He sent out this statement after the firing of head coach Brett Brown, via ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski:

"We are really disappointed and know we let our fans down. It’s unacceptable and it’s important to hold that we all hold ourselves accountable. We’re going to be doing a real assessment of how we got here and expect that more changes need to be made in order to get this organization back on track. This will be a crucial offseason for us and we need to get it right."

If you remember back after the Devils fired Ray Shero, it didn’t seem like they were looking to go through another rebuild. Obviously, the NHL Trade Deadline might have changed a few things, but the fact is Harris said he wants this team to “win now”. It seems like this offseason could be a busy one for the Devils and 76ers. Harris needs to change the narrative for his teams, especially if he really does end up buying the New York Mets.

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