Owner of 76ers Says He’s ‘100%’ Behind Player Empowerment

(Bloomberg) -- NBA owners met last week to discuss the league’s long-awaited return to play at Disney World in July. The meeting ended up being mostly about racism and what the league could do to fix the problem, said Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Josh Harris.

“We have a crisis going on in our society and sports, particularly sports that I’m involved with,” Harris, who’s also co-owner of the New Jersey Devils hockey club, said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview.

“We have a real role to play, not only really speaking out against the systemic racism that exists in this country, but also doing something, doing something to change what’s happening,” Harris said.

Team owners across professional sports, most of them white men, are under increasing pressure to speak out against discrimination and racial injustice in American society, and it’s no longer possible to waver. Some, such as Jerry Jones of the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys, continue to insist that players contain their urge to show solidarity against racism.

For years, the NFL’s treatment of former star quarterback Colin Kaepernick has underscored the deep divide over players’ right to free speech on and off the playing field. After Kaepernick, then with the San Francisco 49ers, began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016, he was ostracized and eventually left unsigned. It was only this month that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league was wrong not to listen to its players and encouraged them to protest against black oppression.

NBA’s Role

Harris said the National Basketball Association, in which some 75% of players are black, has a “unique role to play.”

“I need to go 100% to support player empowerment,” he said. “It means encouraging your players to express themselves freely and be willing to speak out, if they feel comfortable, in whatever way they believe helps make the world a better place, and to afford them the platforms and the leadership and talk to them about the issues.”

Harris, a co-founder of the investment manager Apollo Global Management Inc., is partners with Blackstone Group Inc.’s David Blitzer in the 76ers, the Devils and the English Premier League team Crystal Palace. The two have attracted added attention in recent days because of reports that their company, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, is considering a purchase of the New York Mets baseball team.

Harris demurred on that topic. “The Mets are a storied franchise,” he said. “We never talk about things that we may or may not be looking at.”

Like all franchise owners, Harris and Blitzer have been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. The economics of pro sports amid Covid-19 shutdowns are “brutal,” Harris said, yet the future is still bright.

“We’re going to take a short-term hit,” he said. “When you take a long-run perspective and you look at how much people miss sports and how much they want to watch it, and its ability to bring communities together and its ability to highlight these types of issues, I think that long-run, the franchise values will recover.”

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