How Knicks Fans So Successfully Trespassed In Philly

PHILADELPHIA, PA — Carolina players were still celebrating their overtime win and series sweep over the Flyers on Saturday night when the crowd erupted into the sort of south Philadelphia earthquaking that has become a regular geologic phenomenon during home playoff games. "Let's go Fly-ers."

And about sixteen hours later, the ground still ringing from that tribute, in the same city, the same arena, the same stage turned from ice to hardwood, the Sixers-Knicks series ending in the same 4-0 sweep, there were cheers, too. Cheers from unthinkably massive throngs of Knicks fans, a particularly pukeish hue of orange and blue that is all too reminiscent of the Mets, that had fully overtaken the arena.

This tale of two sweeps makes it clearer than ever how divorced Sixers owner Josh Harris, the man who also owns the NFL's Washington Commanders and the NHL's New Jersey Devils, is from this city. And how the hundreds of millions he's making off the Sixers have come at the cost of a historically rabid fanbase's passion.

At the Feb. 5 trade deadline this year, the Sixers were desperately fighting for a good playoff spot. Joel Embiid make public pleas for them to add more role players. Embiid knew, as fans knew, just how dangerous the core of the Sixers could be if they were all healthy in the postseason.

But instead of adding players, the Harris-helmed Sixers decided to subtract. They offloaded Jared McCain, who had flashed high end potential in 2024-25, and salary money to Oklahoma City. The move allowed the Sixers to duck under the NBA's luxury tax, which probably would have been around $10 million.

The New York Knicks, meanwhile, added Jose Alvarado at the deadline, vastly improving their bench. They paid $44 million in luxury tax, vastly more than the Sixers would have if they had just kept McCain, who has thrived as a role player in OKC.

It was impossible to justify as a basketball decision. Players and fans were stunned. Betrayed. Everyone knew the Sixers needed help. But it should not have come as a surprise.

Unlike Jeffrey Lurie of the Eagles, John Middleton of the Phillies, and even Comcast Spectacor and the Flyers, the Harris-Blitzer Entertainment Group has not demonstrated any sort of comparable long-term loyalty to or identity with Philadelphia. In fact, with the Harris group's purchase of two major nearby Philly rivals, they've demonstrated quite the opposite.

And it begs another examination of the Process, something that comes off as the slogan of the lovable underdog when uttered by Embiid, but as a horribly successful marketing gimmick when understood in the historical context the past fifteen years now provide.

When Harris bought the Sixers in 2011, they almost immediately launched into a full scale "tanking" that bought them the notoriety of the entire NBA and triggered the modern draft lottery to guard against such gaming of the system.

But deliberately losing for so many years also bought the Sixers a degree of the free marketing that comes with infamy, the way many Americans couldn't name Taliban before 9/11. The Sixers were so bad, so incredibly, deliberately bad, that it was actually compelling the rest of the country to watch.

Starting in 2011, the Sixers got steadily worse for five straight years. They went from 35 wins to 34 to 19 to 18 to all the way down to 10. Yes, they went 10-72 in 2015-16. They won 28 games the year after that. The year after that, when Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons emerged at full strength, the Sixers 50-win season seemed an outright miracle. How had they done it?! Trust the Process echoed in corners of the country that didn't follow basketball closely. The trick even worked on Sixers fans. Sam Hinkie died for our sins, signs at the arena used to read, speaking of the fired Sixers general manager who drafted Embiid and was seen as the "architect" of the Process.

But for Harris, the Process delivered massive returns. Somehow, by 2015, when the Process Sixers were at their lowest, the team had actually more than doubled its valuation, according to Forbes, from $249 million in 2011 to $700 million. Their small successes in 2017-18 brought them to a value of $1.18 billion, which they again doubled in 2021 to $2.5 billion, which they again doubled in 2025 to $5.61 billion, according to Forbes.

Today, the Sixers are one of the highest valued franchises in the entire NBA, despite never advancing past the second round of the playoffs in the 15 years of Harris's ownership.

Needless to say, the Philadelphia 76ers can afford Jared McCain. They can very much afford the comparatively paltry luxury tax hit. Instead, they chose to avoid the hit by making the team objectively worse.

Institutional failings are not new to the Sixers under Harris. They've had turnover at general manager. They've been pocked by strange inner turmoils, including one former GM who made a fake social media account to trash talk Embiid. They've somehow failed to build the right pieces around superstars like Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. And the greed of ownership, the legacy of a Process that was clearly more about financial gains than about creating a winner, has taken its toll on the Philadelphia fan base. Philly fanatics can be heartless, unforgiving, sometimes thoughtless in their summary judgements, but they are authentic. And nothing quite evaporates the character of a community like the out of touch maneuverings of a greedy billionaire.

That is the real reason that fungal bloom of Knicks colors was so predominant Friday and Sunday night in Philadelphia. Ticket prices had little to do with it. Philly fans, and the organization, always find a way. The Flyers died for six years and their cross-state rival in Pittsburgh had no measurable presence during last month's playoff series. You'd need a magnifying glass to find opposing team's fans at a Phillies or Eagles playoff game. Those same relentless, infamous legions are Sixers fans too, basketball fans at heart.

It is undeniable that the magic that invests the Phillies, Eagles, and Flyers fanbases is missing from the Sixers. This has not always been the case. From the playgrounds of Earl the Pearl Monroe to the years of Dr. J, Charles Barkley, Allen Iverson, to Dawn Staley and Temple and Villanova's recent NCAA titles, Philly has a basketball culture as rich as anywhere in America. But it will take the conclusion of the Process and a new owner to make the Sixers the face of that once more.