By John McMullen
Philadelphia, PA - Billionaire investor Joshua Harris and a few friends cut a check of $280 million to free the Philadelphia 76ers or at least what's left of their fan base from the clutches of Ed Snider.
Comcast-Spectacor agreed Wednesday to sell 90 percent of the Sixers to a group led by Harris in a deal that still has to be approved by the NBA's Board of Governors.
The agreement, of course, does not include the Wells Fargo Center or the Philadelphia Flyers, the two things Comcast-Spectacor chairman, Snider, actually cares about.
Snider is a bit of a "Two-Face" in the eyes of Philadelphia fans. He might not be a criminal mastermind like Harvey Dent, the fictional villain with a dual personality that becomes Two-Face, an enemy of Batman in the DC Comics Universe, but Snider displays a similar dichotomy to the followers of his sports teams.
To Flyers fans, Ed is a hero -- a never say die owner who will do anything to win hockey's biggest prize. While the Stanley Cup hasn't taken up residence in the city in well over 30 years, everyone agrees it hasn't been due to a lack of effort.
Heck after yet another underachieving season, Snider and his lieutenants recently remade his hockey team again. History and Snider's track record says the Flyers will come up short in their quest for the Stanley Cup again next year but things like hesitation, inactivity and passivity are never the reason
for any failings.
To Sixers fans, Snider is a clod. An absentee buffoon of an owner happy to collect the riches of the NBA's massive television contract while ignoring the product he puts on the floor.
To be fair, it's a lot more difficult to make a major move in the NBA than the NHL. The rigid construct of the NBA's salary cap hamstrings you to a certain extent and is just one of the reasons owners are currently locking out the players in hopes of revamping a broken system.
Still, no matter how you spin it, Snider had been a collossal failure as an NBA owner.
Under Comcast-Spectacor, the Sixers did reach the NBA Finals in 2001 but understand Pat Croce was running the team then. He left the organization a scant six weeks after the 2001 Finals after losing a power play to Snider.
Since then, Snider has held the franchise hostage. Philadelphia hasn't advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 2003, and it hasn't recorded a winning season since 2004-05.
Meanwhile, the team has ranked toward the bottom in the league in attendance over the past four seasons, bottoming out in 2010-11 when they ranked last in building capacity, playing to 72.6 percent of capacity and averaging just 14,751 fans per game.
The bad news for Sixers fans is Snider isn't going away. He'll still own 10 percent of the team and the Sixers will remain a long-term tenant of his building. The good news is that he will have no control over the team's day-to-day operations.
The 46-year-old Harris, who is worth $1.5 billion, according to Forbes Magazine and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business, is expected to make the Sixers his top priority,
"We are honored to have the opportunity to be affiliated with this storied franchise," Harris said in a statement. "As a basketball fan who attended college in Philadelphia, and with family roots here, I have always felt a strong connection to this city and the 76ers.
"We look forward to helping the 76ers organization build on this past season’s accomplishments in the years ahead. The ownership group also looks forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Comcast-Spectacor."
Harris' ownership group, which includes Jason Levien, a former NBA player agent and executive with the Sacramento Kings; David Blitzer, a Senior Managing Director of The Blackstone Group; and Art Wrubel, is an unknown and the prospect of Levien replacing the highly-regarded Rod Thorn as team
president isn't exactly a comforting thought.
That said, getting rid of "Peter Puck" was paramount to the long-term viability of the 76ers.
In fact, since Snider and his incompetence are keeping the Orange and Black, for the first time since Philadelphia's most overrated owner forced Croce out on his ass, the Sixers long-term future looks more promising than the Flyers.
"Comcastic" news, at least for Philadelphia's basketball fans.
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