I’d like to start by sharing a brief story. This story details an interchange that occurred sometime within the past five years in the offices of Apollo Global Management in New York City. The story comes to Liberty Ballers from a source who has requested anonymity but has firsthand knowledge of the event in question.
Read the full piece here.
After the disaster that was the Sixers’ interminable 2019-20 season, there is no shortage of blame to go around.
The lion’s share of the blame, justifiably, will go to the team’s ramshackle front office. Following two years of concerted messaging from the members at the top of the organization that incessantly extolled the virtues of the team’s “collaborative” structure, the experiment fell flat on its face this summer. Rather than benefiting from a group of diverse opinions from various executives, the structure only obscured exactly who had final say on personnel moves, and made it impossible to know who to blame when said decisions went up in flames.
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Here lies the Philadelphia 76ers coaching career of Brett Brown.
His tenure with the Sixers began in August of 2013, when he was hired by newly-minted general manager Sam Hinkie. Immediately, the two embarked on one of the most daring and systematic teardowns in the history of professional sports.
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In life, sometimes things line up perfectly. You’re running late so you miss your train, you buy a ticket for the next train, sit down in the car and the girl next to you becomes your wife. Alchemy. Serendipity. All sorts of stars-aligning happenstances are all around us, all the time.
This is not one of those.
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“They say we die twice. Once, when the breath leaves our body. And once, when the last person we know says our name.”
That was Al Pacino in the criminally-underrated 2012 release, Stand Up Guys. Pacino was talking to Christopher Walken, a friend and former colleague who he fears will soon kill him, per the request of their employer — a menacing, uncompromising mob boss played by Mark Margolis. That second part isn’t really germane to this column, but it feels like necessary context, nonetheless.
Read the full piece here.