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  • Will it really be an All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park if the best of the best aren’t there?

    Will it really be an All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park if the best of the best aren’t there?

    The best player in Major League Baseball — a player who can make a claim to being the greatest baseball player ever — will not play in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park. The best player on the most popular team in Major League Baseball — a player who hit at least 53 home runs in three of the previous four seasons and is among the most recognizable figures in the sport — will not play either. And the best pitcher for the franchise that is hosting the game — a pitcher who can make a claim to being the best starter in the majors for the last several years — wasn’t initially selected to be an All-Star, then was, then rejected the invitation.

    If the stars everyone wants to see don’t play, does the All-Star Game still make a sound? It was a question worth contemplating Monday. It wasn’t the only one. The players who will make up the American and National League rosters Tuesday night plopped down on chairs along Ashburn Alley for the game’s media availability, and the juice wasn’t quite what it might have been.

    There were a couple of famous names, such as Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. There were emerging stars, such as the Washington Nationals’ James Wood and the Chicago Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong. There were the grateful first-timers, such as the Phillies’ Jesús Luzardo and the Detroit Tigers’ Kevin McGonigle (a proud Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast alum). But because of some adverse circumstances, the showcase will be without three of the game’s greatest showmen.

    The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has irritation in his left knee. The Yankees’ Aaron Judge has a stress fracture in his right rib. The Phillies’ Zack Wheeler has a bruise to his ego.

    Shohei Ohtani (left) will sit it out Tuesday night along with Zack Wheeler.Mark J. Terrill

    They were missed Monday and will be missed Tuesday, though their conspicuous absences weren’t all their fault. As the Dodgers’ best hitter and one of their best pitchers, Ohtani already bears some heavy obligations; he can be forgiven for declining to play hurt through even an inning Tuesday. And Judge hasn’t appeared in a game for the Yankees since May 31.

    Wheeler is a different story, though, and his situation did raise the issue of the All-Star Game’s purpose. Is it a showcase for the game’s most popular and accomplished players, a chance for fans to see those stars all together at once? Is it a reward for those players whose performances in the season’s first half were particularly excellent? If so, does the game really need its longtime quota system of having every team represented?

    Wheeler’s snub touched on all those topics. It had become a cause célèbre around here, of course, and he was so miffed that on Friday, when Major League Baseball offered him a spot on the NL team, he said no, telling reporters, “They disrespected me, so I’m not going to participate in it.” His nose-thumbing at MLB has garnered him a lot of atta-boys from Phillies fans and media members. Still, it would be easier to be sympathetic to Wheeler if he hadn’t been selected to the All-Star Team in 2024 and 2025 and declined each year not just to pitch but to show up to the game.

    In fairness to Wheeler, he was suffering from some back tightness in 2024 and had pitched on the Sunday before the 2025 game. But in fairness to the people who make such decisions, how many times does a player have to turn down participating in the All-Star festivities before they catch the hint that he’d rather spend the break down the shore?

    Maybe the honor of playing in the All-Star Game doesn’t matter as much to Wheeler as the honor of saying he’s an All-Star does, especially once it comes time for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s voters to consider his credentials and case for induction.

    But then, Wheeler’s attitude toward the game is nothing new among major leaguers, despite the common assertion (and reality) that baseball’s All-Star Game carries more meaning than the NBA All-Star Game or the Pro Bowl. If it does, it’s not by much.

    “I never felt like there was that much at stake,” said Phillies manager Don Mattingly, a six-time American League All-Star selection during his 14-year career with the Yankees. “I felt like it was an exhibition, really. There was so much stuff around it, all the stuff you have to do. At game time, guys want to play, but you’re not as invested as you are in a pennant race, going down to the last week of the season. It doesn’t feel like that.”

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    So instead of Wheeler, the National League’s pitching staff will have the San Diego Padres’ Adrian Morejon, a 27-year-old middle reliever with a 3.42 earned-run average this season. And because the rotation schedules of Jacob Misiorowski, Paul Skenes, and Max Meyer — three of the National League’s top starters — made them unavailable to pitch Tuesday night, Luzardo was among some late additions to the roster.

    “There’s two sides,” said Luzardo, who is 8-4 with a 3.51 ERA and 136 strikeouts in 110⅓ innings this season. “The child in me sees it as all the best stars in baseball getting together and playing a game. That was me growing up watching the All-Star Game. Now, being a player, it’s a reward for the success you’ve had. Obviously, there’s a lot of motivation to go out and perform every time out. You’re going to get the best out of everyone at these games.”

    The question isn’t whether the fans will see these players give their best. The question is whether the players they’ll see are really the best — and how many of the best of the best really want to be there at all.

  • Is a bullpen arm now the Phillies’ biggest need at the trade deadline? Depends on how they feel about one man.

    Is a bullpen arm now the Phillies’ biggest need at the trade deadline? Depends on how they feel about one man.

    How much does Dave Dombrowski believe in his best acquisition of the offseason?

    By several metrics, Jonathan Bowlan has been one of the most productive relievers in the majors over the last 2½ months. Since May 3, he ranks among the top 15 in the majors in the following categories:

    • Strikeout rate (33.7%, 11th)
    • Walk rate (4.8%, 15th)
    • Strikeout/walk ratio (7.00, 8th)
    • Ground-ball rate (58.3%, 15th)

    And then there is the most important category. Heading into Sunday, only three pitchers carried a lower ERA than the 0.86 Bowlan had posted in his last 21 outings: Robert Suarez (Braves), Luke Weaver (Mets), and Mason Miller (Padres).

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    That trio has logged a ton of high-leverage innings over the years. The question Dombrowski must ask himself: Can Bowlan do the same?

    The answer should play a big role in the Phillies’ trade deadline strategy. The back of their bullpen has been leaking some serious oil as of late. Since June 1, Orion Kerkering, Brad Keller, and Jose Alvarado have combined to allow 18 of 42 batters to reach base in high-leverage situations in the seventh, eighth, or ninth inning. Of those 18 baserunners, nine have scored.

    At this point, Kerkering shouldn’t be a serious consideration when the Phillies are projecting the top of their postseason depth chart. The 25-year-old righty’s struggles in pressure situations was a recurring theme even before last October’s meltdown in Game 4 at Dodger Stadium. Over the last two regular seasons, Kerkering has 37 strikeouts against 22 walks and hit-by-pitches in high-leverage situations. In the last two weeks, he has entered two late-game situations and then proceeded to walk three batters. There is nothing Kerkering can do between now and the trade deadline that should make the Phillies more comfortable with him high on the pecking order behind Jhoan Duran.

    Orion Kerkering shouldn’t be a serious consideration for the top of the Phillies’ postseason depth chart.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    Alvarado is fast approaching that point. The veteran lefty entered Sunday having allowed runs in eight of his last 19 outings, and at least two runs in six of them. Only two relievers in the majors had pitched as many innings as him with a higher ERA. The numbers are a little bit confusing. His 28.5 strikeout rate ranks 29th out of 171 qualified relievers. Although his walk rate is slightly worse than league average, it is markedly better than any that he posted during his prime years of 2021-24 (8.9% this season vs. a minimum of 10.5% previously). His fielding independent metrics are better than they’ve been since 2023.

    Even taking all of that into consideration, Alvarado is a dramatically different pitcher than he was in 2022 and 2023, when he struck out 37% of his batters with a 2.14 FIP (3.38 this season). It’s fine to consider him a wild card vs. writing him out of the picture completely. But he won’t be anything more than a wild card before the trade deadline.

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    Keller? Even without the forearm issue, the Phillies haven’t seen much to make them comfortable heading into a postseason as the primary bridge to Duran. Opposing hitters have posted a whopping .856 OPS against him in high-leverage situations. In an ideal world, the 30-year-old is a sixth- or seventh-inning arm come October.

    Which brings us back to Bowlan. Acquired in an offseason trade that sent Matt Strahm to Kansas City, Bowlan appears to have elbowed his way into his manager’s circle of trust. On Saturday night, Don Mattingly turned to Bowlan with two on and nobody out in the bottom of the eighth inning to protect a 4-1 lead. After hitting his first batter with a pitch to load the bases, Bowlan got Spencer Torkelson to ground into a double play. He escaped the inning with just the one run scored, walking Riley Greene before getting Eduardo Valencia to ground out.

    It wasn’t exactly the cleanest audition. But maybe that counts for something. This was a big-boy spot. Middle of the order, a trio of young power hitters, two men already on base. To hit a batter and walk a batter and only allow one run at least shows a little bit of intestinal fortitude.

    If Mattingly is going to make Bowlan his primary eighth-inning arm for the foreseeable future, then he is doing the right thing. At 6-foot-6 and 240 pounds, the 29-year-old righty sure looks the part. But that is still very much a hypothetical. Bowlan was predominantly a middle-innings guy during his three years in Kansas City. He isn’t a classic strikeout arm, whatever the overall numbers say this year. He has seven of them in 28 high-leverage plate appearances this season, compared with four walks. Again, though, the sample size is small. The Phillies would be wise to get a longer look at him.

    In the meantime, there really isn’t a question about the trade deadline and the bullpen. The Phillies need to do everything they can to address it. A lot of people seem to want to frame it as an either/or, with regard to their clear holes in the outfield and/or from the right side of the plate. That’s not the right way to look at it. After this latest virtuoso performance by the top two pitchers in the Phillies’ rotation, and with Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber hitting like MVP candidates, Dombrowski can’t afford to pick and choose which holes he fills this July. Last year, the Blue Jays acquired Louis Varland and Ty France from the Twins in a deadline deal. The Phillies themselves landed Duran and Harrison Bader. They can and should be thinking quantity.

    The real question right now is quality. Do the Phillies need an eighth-inning version of Duran? Or can they get by with a Varland type? A lot depends on how they feel about Bowlan. Because, right now, he looks like the only viable option.

  • Allentown’s gift to golf, Rich Lerner, and the book that reveals his ribald side, with Tiger, Phil, and Jack

    Allentown’s gift to golf, Rich Lerner, and the book that reveals his ribald side, with Tiger, Phil, and Jack

    The most pleasant surprise of the recent memoir from the most elegant studio host in sports is, deliciously, all of the boobs and balls and cussing.

    “Did you find it too racy?” Rich Lerner asks, bemused but earnest, as if the aristocracy at the exclusive, tennis-whites Philadelphia Cricket Club might look sideways at him during the party that is to follow. He uncrosses his legs, adjusts the perfect collar of his white shirt tucked just inside his slim, tailored blue blazer, and grins like a little boy proud of his mischief.

    No. I found it authentic. Him naked in a Scottish bathtub, him learning the ways of the world from the profane teaching pro at his dad’s pitch-and-putt in Dorneyville, Pa., him wisecracking with Tiger Woods in much, much happier times.

    Still, why push the envelope with “Aren’t you that Golf Guy?”? Why risk the 30-year reputation of the man who, as the voice of diplomacy and reason on The Golf Channel, has steered the game through the perilous waters of Tiger and LIV and Phil?

    “Because that was my experience, and I wanted to be authentic,” Lerner said. “This was not going to be ‘polished Rich’ at the desk. This was going to be Richie in the newsroom, Richie in the compound, Richie with his friends, Richie growing up — schticky, schticky Dicky.”

    Lerner has served in various roles at the Golf Channel, most recognizably in marathon sessions of Golf Central: Live From at golf’s biggest tournaments. On that set, analysts dissect each day’s topics with the finesse of a chainsaw, while Lerner more steadily guides them through the wilderness with nudges of stiletto wit.

    Lerner generously addresses Phil and LIV and, of course, Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. At 65 and still brimming with energy, he’d set out to write a Tiger book but there was so much more to his three decades on the set and his six decades in the game.

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    Besides, who needs another Tiger book when you can write a book about the greatest broadcaster to come out of the Lehigh Valley? Perhaps — with apologies to Ernie Johnson, who babysits Shaq and Charles — the best sports studio host on television?

    That’s what Lerner ignores in the book, subtitled “Doglegs and Detours from a Life in the Game.” He affects complete avoidance of his colossal presence in the bigger picture of the game. His typical and innate humility serves only to amplify his significance. Jim Nantz and Mike Tirico deliver the live action with trademarked flair that may or may not be contrived, but neither has to act as referee to the two most brilliant and relevant analysts in sports, former pro golfers Brandel Chamblee and Paul McGinley.

    It’s hard to put down but easy to set aside and pick up again. It’s great for the beach, the bathroom, or the briefcase, if you travel for work. When it’s light, it’s as light as cotton candy, and he radiates the joy of the game both in the book and in the flesh.

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    It isn’t all light; ever less so these days, it seems. The stickier subjects affect Lerner far differently. In speaking with The Inquirer at Cricket in the moments before the event, Lerner delighted in culinary discussions concerning Yocco’s hot dogs (IYKYK) or Dalessandro’s cheesesteaks, one of which he was gnawing, standing up, when I walked into the ballroom.

    Temple grad and Allentown native Rich Lerner (left) with The Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee. NBC Sports

    But when the talk turned to Tiger, who just went through rehab again, and Phil, whose spiraling disgraces have attained a level of surreality, Lerner became subdued, like a man whose gifted children have lost their way.

    “I think it’s sad,” he said.

    He looked sad.

    He seems especially troubled about Mickelson’s issues and choices, clearly because Lerner, who adored Arnold Palmer (Golf Channel’s co-creator), knows the game needed its next Arnie, and, just as clearly, the next Arnie was Phil. But then came LIV, and now there are allegations of sexual misconduct, and it appears that Mickelson’s window is closed.

    “When he should have been embraced — he should have been the Ryder Cup captain, probably twice. You can just keep going,” Lerner said. “He would have had that Arnold Palmer ambassadorship — show up at a major when you’re 65 and hold court, reminisce about the shot you hit off the pine straw in 2010 — that was his.

    “America’s a forgiving country. You never say never, but at this point, he seems adrift.”

    Lerner offered that piece of poignancy off the cuff Monday night. He writes it even better in the book, especially in the chapter, “Impossible to F— Up.” Spoiler: Phil F—’s it up.

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    Lerner is golf’s chief negotiator. He is a conciliator at his core. He loves the game as much for its inherent morality as for its incredible, rewarding difficulty. The difficulty remains even as the morality leeches away.

    This turmoil, for him, is torture.

    He grew up in the game, twice a champion at old Berkleigh Country Club out in Kutztown, a real-life Danny Noonan, 6-foot-4 and lean and complete with the thick, unruly hair. He began college at Lehigh, recalibrated to Temple, became a local TV legend young — well, I’ll let him tell that story. He’s so good at it; his video essays on The Golf Channel are masterpieces of depth and nuance, and his autobiographical descriptions of the people who made and make him are just as good.

    You’ll meet grateful firefighters and graceless pro-am hacks and a couple who fostered at least 80 children, which was my favorite part of the book.

    You’ll learn he loves basketball — Big 5 legend Fran Dunphy attended, as did celebrated Sports Illustrated hoops writer Jack McCallum — and, though he was on Broad Street in 1983 when Doc and Moses brought it home, Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway stole his heart when he moved to Orlando, where The Golf Channel began. Now he and it are both in Connecticut, where he never misses an Eagles game and catches the Phillies whenever he can.

    The book also talks about the lure of alcohol on the course and in the booth, and, between that and the boobs and balls and the cussing, you might think it’s not a worthy review for a man so austere.

    It is.

  • The Griffeys hope their legacy can be used as a force to attract interest in Black American players

    The Griffeys hope their legacy can be used as a force to attract interest in Black American players

    There was an obvious sense of pride coursing through Citizens Bank Park Friday night as every baseball player, coach and keeper of the game opened Philadelphia’s days-long All-Star Game celebration with the annual showcase HBCU Swingman Classic, a game featuring elite players from historically Black colleges and universities.

    Alongside that sense of pride was also a palpable sense of urgency, too obvious to be an undercurrent, too important to be ignored.

    Certainly, former players, coaches and managers who are African American don’t ignore the conundrum that in a game that is arguably more diverse than it’s ever been yet fighting a decline in the number of Black Americans participating on the field. The sport that annually celebrates color-barrier breaker Jackie Robinson has seen the percentage of Black players dwindle from a record high of approximately 18% in 1991 to 6.8% this season.

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    The Swingman Classic, the brainchild of Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., was born out of a belief that a game had to recapture the hearts and minds of Black America. To succeed completely, the game once more has to convince a culture that its history and populations have not been “lost, stolen and strayed,” to borrow a civil rights term from the 1960s.

    Griffey Jr., who works with Major League Baseball, the players’ union and other entities to rebuild a shrinking constituency, makes clear his intent.

    “This is very important to me,” Griffey Jr., 56, said prior to the Classic clash. “I feel that I’m helping the parenting of baseball and giving these young kids an opportunity to be seen. ‘Cause I’ve lived my dream. I’ve gone out there, played 22 years. I want the same opportunity for every kid. No matter your background, as a kid, you just want to be seen and be heard.”

    Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., walks on the field during batting practice before the HBCU Swingman Classic on Friday at Citizens Bank Park.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    From early childhood, Junior had no trouble being seen or heard, while growing up in major league clubhouses and watching and learning the game as his father, Ken Griffey Sr., thrived in 19 big-league seasons. “It was always, ‘Dad, I want to be a major league player.’ Junior was always so proud to get out on the field on Father-Son Day. It was fun. And he was good,” Griffey Sr. said.

    He was also a great student, blessed with talent, genes, and a thirst to learn from the plenty of icons he mingled with. The likes of Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Willie McCovey, and other greats graced his mother’s dinner table when in Cincinnati to play Senior’s Reds. He played on the field with the children of his father’s teammates like Pete Rose and Tony Perez. He was in the presence of Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan routinely.

    Getting that close-up of an era that embodied the golden age of Black American ball showed Junior the way, and the sweet-swinging, Gold Glove-fielding center fielder made the most of what he learned, using his skills through 22 seasons to build a Hall of Fame career.

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    Neither father nor son is willing to rest on their laurels. While both insist that their shared experiences did not lead them to ever judge teammates by color, nationality, or ethnicity, that did not mean either wanted to see the legacy built by their own culture disappear from the game.

    Senior is especially too well aware of a change gone awry. “When I played in Cincinnati, I would walk into a clubhouse with Joe Morgan, George Foster, Ed Armbrister, Danny Driessen, Hal King and Tommy Hall.” And on the Yankees teams he played on? “Well, they put us altogether, on one side of the clubhouse, so it was easy to spot us,” he said, laughing. “There was Oscar Gamble, Andre Robertson, Billy Sample, Willie Randolph, Groove [Don Baylor], Big Blood [Dave Winfield]. And Rudy May was over with the pitchers.”

    No major league team can point to such an abundance of homegrown players of color today. If a team has more than two or three African Americans, it makes headlines on Jackie Robinson Day. What also makes headlines is teams that have no African American players in highly publicized events like the 2022 World Series between the Phillies and Houston Astros.

    Members of the National League team line up during player introductions before the HBCU Swingman Classic.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    Tuesday, the Phillies will have on hand the Black players who constructed positive vibes decades after the team treated Jackie Robinson horrifically. Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard surely will lend their support to the All-Star Phillies’ family fest. Dick Allen memories will abound. Gary Matthews and Garry Maddox should be easy to spot. And yet that urgency about how to include African Americans in the game’s massive number of people of color will linger long after the midseason classic ends.

    That is why Junior Griffey, with his father at his side, is focused not on fastballs, but on the formula that assures that Black players will be seen by scouts, teams, GMs, and eventually fan bases.

    It will require work as well as events like the Swingman Classic to begin to break the mesmerizing allure of the NBA and NFL when it comes to athletes gifted enough to go in more than one direction. This the Griffeys know. This Griffey Sr. has lived, as have three grandsons who chose to play football, one — Trey — professionally with the Steelers.

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    “Baseball was my fourth sport, behind football, basketball and track,” said Senior. “And we were a football family. My father played college football. I was all-state in Pennsylvania. But a baseball scout watched me. He got tryouts with the Pirates, then two with the Reds. I faced Doc Medich in batting practice and hit two home runs.”

    A contract followed after Cincinnati drafted Griffey Sr. in the 29th and final round of the amateur draft. Years later, he watched Junior become the first pick in the 1987 draft. “Dad was the last person picked by the Reds in his draft,” Junior said. “He spent 19 years in the big leagues because somebody took a chance.

    “Some of these kids here, going to these schools, they get lost in the shuffle,” Junior added. “Scouts or someone else, they don’t go into these inner-city kids and find these diamonds in a rough. So, I can see 15 guys, but it may be this one guy that’s playing over here that is a monster. The key is you look.”

    No one guarantees a Griffey will break through because of this one event. But 10 participants in past three HBCU Classics have been drafted.

    Will baseball turn to its past, to a time when HBCUs used to be fonts of future baseball talents? For once Jackie arrived in 1947, the talent hunt was on, waged by forward-thinking teams that could not resist talents to be found within the Negro Leagues, on farm fields, in the factories and, yes, the nation’s HBCUs.

    From Morgan State in Baltimore, Joe Black, one of Robinson’s first Black teammates in Brooklyn, and the first Black pitcher to win a World Series game. Hall of Famers Lou Brock (Southern University), Andre Dawson (Florida A&M), and mainstays such as Tommie Agee, (Grambling State), Cecil Cooper (Prairie View A&M), and Marquis Grissom and Vince Coleman (Florida A&M) followed.

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    “Now people say Blacks don’t play baseball anymore,” Senior said. “That’s not true. Every year I go down to Vero Beach for the Hank Aaron Invitational. Over 200 kids show up, little kids to teens. And these kids can play.”

    Indeed, graduates of the Aaron annual camp and showcase include the Braves’ Michael Harris II, the Cardinals’ Jordan Walker, White Sox rookie Braden Montgomery, the Yankees’ Carlos Rodon and the Nationals’ Nasim Nuñez. They all came through one or more of baseball’s programs designed to attract American players of color to the game.

    Oh, and there is one other youngster worth mentioning. Justin Crawford, son of former major leaguer Carl Crawford, now patrols center field for the Phillies.

    Crawford, like Griffey Jr., is working hard in the family business, building not only on a family legacy, but one baseball is dusting off and showing off again, the Griffeys hope.

    Claire Smith is the founding executive director of the Claire Smith Center for Sports Media at Temple University. She is in the writers’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a Red Smith Award honoree.

  • The Sixers’ title hopes still hinge on Joel Embiid. Mike Gansey admitted as much.

    The Sixers’ title hopes still hinge on Joel Embiid. Mike Gansey admitted as much.

    With all due respect to LeBron James, the Sixers’ greatest and most impactful unknown is the same as it has always been.

    Mike Gansey acknowledged as much on Thursday.

    “Obviously,” the Sixers new president of basketball operations said in a courtside interview during ESPN’s broadcast of the team’s summer league opener, “the big fella is the X-factor.”

    It speaks to the magnitude of Joel Embiid that such a sentiment can be qualified as obvious. Nothing about the Sixers over the last two months has been obvious. From the firing of Daryl Morey to the hiring of Gansey as his replacement to the dramatic trade of Paul George and a couple of first- and second-round picks to the Celtics for some guy named Jaylen Brown to the front office’s attempt to woo James, the Sixers are in the midst of an overhaul more radical than any Embiid has seen in his decade with the team.

    For maybe the first summer of his career, everyone’s focus is elsewhere. Yet, everyone is fooling themselves if they think they can talk about the Sixers as a legitimate contender without factoring the big fella into the equation.

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    The exact nature of the question has changed. There’s no doubt about that. It is no longer, “How far can Embiid carry the Sixers?” In Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, they have young guards who carried them to a Game 2 playoff win over Brown and the Celtics without Embiid. In Brown, they have a player who was overwhelmingly responsible for Boston’s win over the Sixers in Game 1 of the same series. That trio is talented enough to pencil in the Sixers for a playoff spot and, potentially, a top-four seed even if Embiid were not to play a game. At no point prior in the Embiid era have we been able to say such a thing.

    That’s more than a good thing. It’s the reason that a jaded city can now deconstruct its emotional walls and allow itself to invest time and energy in the Sixers again. The potential outcomes are no longer as divergent as “championship contention” or “No. 3 overall draft pick.” The exhaustion that people feel with regard to Embiid is in large part a function of his inordinate importance over the years. With him, the Sixers could beat anybody. Without him, there was little point in watching.

    So, yeah, the question has changed. But it is still the one that matters most when it comes to handicapping the Sixers’ 2026-27 title odds.

    What do they expect out of Embiid?

    What will they get?

    The first part is more interesting. The organization’s public rhetoric regarding their big man has shifted since the change in regimes.

    For Morey, Embiid was something like a mission statement: any time the former president spoke publicly about his team, his comments were centered around the center. He took the job in 2020 with the idea that Embiid was the exact sort of front line, once-in-a-generation superstar that teams need to win a title. The goal was to get him whatever help he needed. Morey professed that belief to (virtually) the bitter end.

    Sixers president of basketball operations Mike Gansey says Joel Embiid was excited about the Jaylen Brown trade.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

    Gansey and ownership proxy Bob Myers have been far less committed in their public sentiments about Embiid. In his introductory press conference a month ago, Gansey avoided talking with much specificity about the big man beyond including him in the framing of the Sixers’ existing roster structure as a “Big Four.”

    “They’re our four guys, they’re under contract. We got to do the best to get them to their best self,” Gansey said on his first day on the job, “because I think every night at 7 p.m., we got to get them to their best to help us win.”

    Barely a month later, George was en route to Boston and the Sixers “Big Four” was now a “Big Three.”

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    Perhaps it is notable, then, that Gansey now feels comfortable speaking of Embiid in such terms as the ones he deployed in his ESPN interview on Thursday.

    “Joel’s in a good space,” Gansey said. “He’s finally healthy going into the offseason. He’s excited about this summer. He’s getting to work here shortly. He expects to have a good year, as we all do.”

    Embiid has been conspicuously silent since the Brown trade. His lone Twitter post in the wake of the deal was about the Tour de France. In an interview with the Sixers’ flagship radio station on Thursday, Gansey said that Embiid was excited and “fired up” when Gansey informed him of the trade.

    Whatever the case, the Sixers are well past the point of factoring Embiid’s feelings into their actions. The Brown trade was as much about the Sixers’ ability to compete without him as with him. At the same time, the only way they contend for a title this season is with him.

    VJ Edgecombe (left), Joel Embiid, and Tyrese Maxey celebrate after winning Game 7 against the Boston Celtics in May.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

    April’s playoff series against the Celtics offers a tidy encapsulation of where the Sixers are. As dominant as Brown was during various stretches, Boston still lost. As impressive as Maxey and Edgecombe were at times, the Sixers still needed to win a Game 7 against the Jayson Tatum-less Celtics just to earn the right of getting blown out of the playoffs by the Knicks. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla offered the definitive sound byte after the Sixers finished off their series comeback.

    “What changed in this series was Joel Embiid came back and they’re a completely different team,” Mazzulla said.

    Embiid missed Game 2 of the next series. The Sixers were outscored by 57 points in the 88 minutes he played against the Knicks. Somewhere on that continuum, their immediate hopes lie.

  • Without Leo Carlsson, the Flyers’ hunt for their pot of gold just got harder and longer

    Without Leo Carlsson, the Flyers’ hunt for their pot of gold just got harder and longer

    Think of the Flyers as an explorer who landed on a deserted island. On this island, deep within miles of thick jungle, is treasure. The explorer knows the treasure is there somewhere, and he aims to find it.

    Leo Carlsson would have been a new machete: sharp, strong, capable of cutting through all those vines and branches and trunks to make the Flyers’ journey to those riches easier and faster. Now, the explorer won’t have that tool. Now that the Anaheim Ducks have matched the five-year, $90-million offer sheet that Carlsson signed with the Flyers last week, the Flyers won’t have the steel blade that Carlsson represented as a 6-foot-3, 21-year-old, clear-cut first-line center just entering his prime.

    So where does that leave them? It means that their trek to that treasure, to their first Stanley Cup since 1974-75, will likely be slower and less certain. They may get to it eventually, but it’s going to take more time and be more costly.

    Had the Ducks declined to match the Flyers’ audacious offer — and make no mistake, this gambit by Danny Brière was bold and creative, as close to a Now youse can’t leave move as an NHL general manager can make — Anaheim would have received four first-round picks from the Flyers. That price would have been steep. But the Flyers would have added Carlsson, who averaged nearly a point a game last season, is an excellent player now, and has shown every sign that he will get even better.

    They need a No. 1 center, not merely for the talent and scoring touch such a player would provide, but also so they can slot their other centers — Trevor Zegras, Christian Dvorak, and Sean Couturier — more appropriately. With Carlsson (or any center of similar caliber, for that matter), Zegras would have become the second-line guy. Dvorak would have become a terrific third-line guy. And Couturier would have remained in the role he played so well in last season’s playoffs, as an outstanding fourth-line checker, faceoff-taker, and leader.

    What’s more, the Flyers have a roster and a farm system with plenty of promising young players, and if this move had come to fruition, they wouldn’t have had to sacrifice any of them to fill one of their biggest holes. That’s perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this result for them: That luxury of gaining an emerging superstar without having to give up valuable players and/or prospects already within the organization likely is no longer available to them.

    With the Carlsson episode behind him, Flyers general manager Danny Brière must be practical about the team’s range of needs. Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer

    They’re interested in the Detroit Red Wings’ Dylan Larkin, for instance; though Larkin is 7½ years older than Carlsson, he still would fit the Flyers like a well-tailored suit. But assuming Larkin, who has a full no-movement clause, is even willing to join the Flyers, the trade package necessary to acquire him would probably have to include a player or two on their current roster. Would Larkin be worth the departure of, say, Owen Tippett and/or Denver Barkey?

    Just because Brière made such a huge play for Carlsson doesn’t mean he has to answer that question, immediately or ever. The smartest thing he and the Flyers’ leadership team have done in the three years since he took over as GM has been to give themselves flexibility in improving the team. They didn’t have to shock the NHL by presenting that offer sheet to Carlsson — a proposal for a contract that has now made him the league’s highest-paid player. But they did. After years of running in place, after qualifying for the postseason for the first time since 2020, they declared that they were ready to spend again, but they made that declaration on their terms.

    They have several choices for how they can proceed. They need not just a No. 1 center, but a top-pair defenseman, or at least one capable of quarterbacking a power play. They can act quickly to acquire one or both of those players, to find short-term and/or long-term answers to those lingering questions, or they can wait.

    Remember: Even if they had won their duel with the Ducks for Carlsson, the Flyers wouldn’t have been considered a true contender this season for the Stanley Cup. Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Jamie Drysdale, Alex Bump, Zegras: All of them have growth and development ahead of them. Yes, the Flyers’ hunt will take longer now that Leo Carlsson, that oh-so useful tool, will remain on the West Coast, but they can still find that chest of gold. They just have to take care not to get lost along the way.

  • LeBron James signing with the Sixers could save Joel Embiid’s career

    LeBron James signing with the Sixers could save Joel Embiid’s career

    Biblical references seem to find a home with the Philadelphia 76ers.

    Moses Malone arrived in 1982 and immediately led the team to the promised land.

    Allen Iverson arrived in 1996 and, five years later, took the Sixers to the NBA Finals. For fans of gospel music, his nickname, “The Answer,” recalled a 1970s hit by Andraé Crouch and the Disciples: “Jesus is the Answer.”

    And, now, LeBron, who was nicknamed “King James” while still a princeling high school star in Akron, Ohio. His namesake, England’s James I, commissioned a translation of the Bible in the early 17th century, the one with all the “Thee’s” and “Ye’s” and my personal favorite, “believeth.”

    Of course, LeBron isn’t a Sixer. Not yet.

    Breaking down LeBron James’ reported top 3 contenders

    But if, by some miracle, he does agree to a tiny free-agent contract this summer, LeBron surely would make the Sixers a favorite to win their first Larry O’Brien Trophy since Larry O’Brien actually was the NBA commissioner.

    This has not been the case largely because the sole benefit of “The Process,” the disastrous, failed rebuilding strategy that began in 2013, is Joel Embiid. He has MVP talent, and he won the award just three years ago, but his rank unprofessionalism — a refusal to commit to fitness, too much energy focused on extracurriculars, an obsession with personal milestones — has kept Embiid and the Sixers from reaching their potential.

    And, while King James might not save Embiid’s mortal soul, with his special brand of tough love, LeBron very well could save Embiid’s mortally afflicted career.

    Come on, man

    Before this goes any further, I don’t believe LeBron is interested in playing basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. Yes, the Sixers somehow traded Paul George and picks for Jaylen Brown — Celtics president Brad Stevens must’ve lost either a bet or his mind — which instantly turned the Sixers into a viable Eastern Conference contender. Nevertheless, I think it’s likely that LeBron’s representatives are using this (feigned) interest as leverage to land the King elsewhere.

    I don’t think he wants to be in Philadelphia, which is a much tougher city than anywhere else he’s played. I don’t think he wants to deal with an organization with an absentee owner and a first-time top executive. I don’t think he wants to be associated or represent one of the most dysfunctional organizations in major league sports over the past 14 years, and with the NFL’s Jets, Raiders, and Browns in that mix, that’s quite an accomplishment. I don’t think he wants to play for the NBA veteran minimum, which is all he’d get at this point.

    There is a chance, though, that his desire to be worshipped will override his desire to give himself the best chance to win a fifth title, because nowhere would worship him the way Philadelphia fans would worship him, just as they worship Moses for leading them out of the wilderness.

    LeBron already did that in Cleveland and Miami. And, as my colleague David Murphy pointed out on Monday, his agent, Rich Paul, said the Knicks disqualified themselves from the LeBron sweepstakes when they won a championship. Murphy’s logic: He could not end their drought, and therefore could not be seen as their savior, so why bother?

    Now that Jalen Brunson did what Patrick Ewing failed to do, LeBron can’t do it. But he damn sure could help Embiid do what Embiid will be paid an average of $62.6 million a year to do over the next three seasons.

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    The Answer

    Winning a title, even with James on board, requires getting the most of whatever’s left out of Embiid, who has bad knees and a bad attitude. Getting the most out of Embiid is something that championship-winning coaches Doc Rivers and Nick Nurse abjectly failed to do, and they had three years apiece.

    This is different.

    LeBron, who is 41 with the body of a 32-year-old, is entering his 24th season. He has gotten the best out of his teammates everywhere he’s gone, whether it’s fellow Hall of Fame-caliber players like Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Kyrie Irving or lesser lights such as Kevin Love and Mo Williams. He has won four championships because of it. You think Austin Reaves — an undrafted tweener guard who averaged 10.8 points in four years of college — would have been offered $185 million by the Lakers for the next four years if LeBron hadn’t been his teammate for the past five years?

    Injury issues have plagued Joel Embiid throughout his career.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer

    Embiid, who is 32 with the body of a 42-year-old, is entering his 11th season since being drafted, though he missed the first two seasons with injuries. On the day the Sixers season ended in a playoff sweep (at the hands of those Knicks) he announced that the 2025-26 season had been a success for him. That’s because his left knee no longer impeded him to the degree it had him impeded him for the past several years.

    Embiid then swore that, at the end of this summer, when training camp begins, since his body feels better, he will be better prepared than in recent years to finally get the Sixers … past the second round of the playoffs?

    Talk about aiming low.

    At any rate, no Sixers since Moses himself is better equipped to make sure Embiid follows through on his latest promises. It worked on “big-boned” Charles Barkley.

    Filling a void

    Since trading cornerstone All-Stars Andre Iguodala in 2012 and Jrue Holiday in 2013, the closest the thing the Sixers have had to a real leader was Jimmy Butler, whose headstrong attitude and routine insubordination were less an example of leadership than a display of self-aggrandizement. Embiid was in his third year of actually playing NBA basketball during the Season of Jimmy, and he certainly got that message.

    Who’s the leader now?

    Embiid blew his chance years ago when it became clear that he was less interested in chasing championships than he was in seeking MVP trophies, Olympic gold medals, milkshakes, and Shirley Temples.

    Tyrese Maxey is an ebullient, well-spoken workaholic, but he lacks the gravitas to lead a championship-caliber team, especially when the roster includes more accomplished players like Embiid and Brown.

    As for Brown — well, he might find it hard to lead a bunch of dummies; last week, he called most pro athletes morons when compared to him after unnamed sources accused him of thinking he was the smartest person in the room: “Let’s keep it a buck [100] … The bar is f— low.”

    James might not be a budding chess master like Brown, but he’s smart enough to know how to win a title and how to run a team. After all, the bar is low.

    Do you think LeBron is going to let Joel make his teammates wait for 2½ hours to leave for the plane after road games? Do you think LeBron is going to sit around and wait for Embiid to come to meetings and shootarounds? No. The answer is, simply, no. If you’re James’s teammate, you will be professionalized or you will be marginalized.

    The Jaylen Brown trade benefits VJ Edgecombe, who will now have the time he needs to develop | Marcus Hayes

    If LeBron James comes to Philly, you will see a fitter, tougher, more committed Joel Embiid.

    James’s habits aren’t contagious, they’re compulsory. It’s a trait he shares with Kobe Bryant. James is kinder than Kobe, and he’s more deferential, but compared to the typical laissez-faire NBA star, he’s neither kind nor deferential.

    He is desperate to win, and if you can’t help him do that, then he doesn’t have time for you.

    Again, I don’t think it’s a realistic outcome. But King James in Philly would be the best medicine for Embiid’s ailing legacy.

  • Brad Stevens says he would rather have not traded Jaylen Brown to Philly, but the Celtics did what they had to do

    Brad Stevens says he would rather have not traded Jaylen Brown to Philly, but the Celtics did what they had to do

    It wasn’t the first time Brad Stevens had heard the question. His story piques a natural curiosity. A man widely regarded as one of the world’s finest basketball coaches walked away from one of the world’s finest basketball coaching jobs at 44 years old. He did so to become a suit. Over the last five years, plenty of people have wondered aloud to the Celtics’ president of basketball operations.

    So, do you miss coaching?

    “I did this week,” Stevens said on Monday, recounting a conversation he had with an interrogator last week. “This is not for the faint of heart.”

    The Sixers just turned Paul George into Jaylen Brown and transformed themselves for an unbelievable price

    Stevens’ news conference alongside Celtics majority owner Bill Chisholm earlier this week offered the world its first chance to inform its opinion on a trade that stunned the NBA like few before it. While the Sixers have yet to announce when they will field questions about their blockbuster acquisition of Boston superstar Jaylen Brown, the guys on the other side of the deal didn’t have the same luxury.

    Rarely does an NBA team encounter such a universal and vociferous disagreement with a trade as the Celtics did to their decision to trade Brown to the Sixers for Paul George and a couple of first- and second- round picks. Here in Philly, the jubilation surrounding such a no-brainer decision was further enhanced by the opportunity to watch Bostonians engage in a collective public meltdown unlike any it has staged since at least the Revolutionary War. One local radio host called it the worst trade in Celtics history. Another said he felt physically ill. Bill Simmons said he woke up from a colonoscopy and assumed he’d died.

    “I’m with you,” Stevens said. “That is a hard thing to trade a guy that you, first of all, care so much about and secondly have so much respect and admiration for, to a team that just beat you in the playoffs and that you’re literally going to play six times before the playoffs next year, with our two preseason games. But I do think that ultimately when you do a deal you need to think about you first and the optionality it creates for you. If I’m being honest, if that exact deal came from a team out west and you were comparing the two, then you’d probably take the team out west. But that’s not the way it was working.”

    Whatever the immediate local reaction to Stevens’ defense of the decision, he and Chisholm offered a master class in how to handle blowback. You do it directly, immediately, and humbly. It helps when you believe in your decision-making process, which the Celtics clearly did. And, look, they were right to feel that way. Because, chances are, this ends up being a good decision for them.

    That’s not the same as saying that the Sixers will regret their decision to trade for Brown. Nor is it the same as saying that the Celtics “won” the deal. None of those things are exclusive from one another. There is a scenario where the Celtics and Sixers both did what was best for them, and that the price was perfectly fair. Granted, things rarely align on all three of those fronts. But this is one of those deals where both sides made the most rational decision and where the market dictated the terms. A lot of the criticism currently being aimed at the Celtics would be better targeted at the 28 general managers who either couldn’t or wouldn’t beat the Sixers’ offer for Brown. If anything, the market was the irrational actor.

    Jaylen Brown spent 10 seasons in Boston after getting selected third overall by the organization in 2016.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer

    From the Sixers’ perspective, the argument remains largely as it did in the immediate wake of the deal. More than practically any other player in the NBA, Brown at least renders believable the idea that the Sixers can contend for a championship over the next two years, given both their smallish backcourt of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe and their preexisting financial condition. Brown’s size, athleticism, explosiveness and shotmaking are a much better fit at about $60 million over three years than George was for essentially the same AAV over two years. That, at the very least, means the Sixers will be doing something other than treading water and praying for a miracle for the duration of Joel Embiid’s contract, which is as immovable — and limiting — as any in the NBA.

    The Celtics were not bound by those constraints. Their desire to remain that way sits at the heart of the decision to trade Brown. Keeping his contract on their books could easily have led them to a fiscal and competitive cliff. A lot of the criticism of the Celtics seems to underestimate this reality.

    The criticism doesn’t account for the idea that Payton Pritchard is worth the entire amount of the four-year, $100 million extension he is eligible to sign. Over the last two seasons, seven guards in the NBA have a .600-plus true shooting percentage while attempting at least 20 shots per 100 possessions. Those seven are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Austin Reaves, Jamal Murray, Anthony Edwards, Luka Dončić, Desmond Bane, and … Pritchard.

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    The criticism doesn’t account for the contract that former second-round pick Jordan Walsh could command as a free agent next summer. It doesn’t account for Hugo González potentially hitting his option year at the same time Pritchard’s current deal is expiring. The Celtics could have made it work for the next couple of years, sure. But they wouldn’t be able to do it the two years after that. The teams that lose sight of those years are the ones who end up where the Sixers were.

    The criticism of the Celtics also seems to under-assess the Celtics’ return. The 2028 draft pick they acquired is hugely valuable given the probability that it ends up as a maximum-odds lottery pick and the time-value aspect of its relative immediacy. The 2031 unprotected pick will be perfectly timed on a number of levels.

    I don’t have room to show you all of the work. But you should at least be able to accept that a basketball mind as astute as Stevens’ and an organization as accomplished as the Celtics have done the work. In a weird way, all of the factors that have generated such outrage are also evidence of how strongly the Celtics believed in their decision.

    Few teams have the stones to trade a player at the peak of his value. The Celtics’ skids were greased by Brown’s eligibility for a contract extension. More often than not, the word “No” is a first domino.

    “They convinced me this was the best way for us to win, and I got there, I did, but it was hard,” Chisholm said. “It was really hard. And I recognize this is a big, big move.”

    It is unquestionably a move that works in the Sixers’ favor. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work out for the Celtics, too.

  • The USMNT lived down to Donald Trump’s expectations: They played like the losers he thought they were

    The USMNT lived down to Donald Trump’s expectations: They played like the losers he thought they were

    If you didn’t believe it before, you need to understand it now: Donald Trump never should have picked up that phone, never should have put in that call to one of his toadies, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, and never should have tried to exert his icky influence in a sport rife with corruption.

    The 4-1 loss by the U.S. men’s national team to Belgium on Monday night at Lumen Field in Seattle was a fitting result. It was an embarrassing end to the World Cup for the home country. It was cosmic payback for a club that hoped to benefit from a president who wanted to strongarm Team USA into the quarterfinals and found out that sports can resist even an autocrat’s attempts to stack the deck.

    Sometimes, once you show you’re willing to wallow in the mud, you can never wash the stain away. The justifications for the Trump administration’s overtures to FIFA to wipe out the one-game suspension for Folarin Balogun — and for FIFA’s acquiescence — were oh-so easy and obvious: This is FIFA.

    U.S. forward Folarin Balogun (20) was the center of attention against Belgium in the World Cup’s round of 16 on Monday.Ted S. Warren

    This is an organization with a history of scandal and corruption so long and detailed that Robert Caro could only begin to chronicle it. This kind of back-scratching and deal-making is nothing new at soccer’s highest level. This is how things work, and everyone knows it and holds their nose against the stench, and all the complaints from Belgium and the other countries left in the World Cup were nothing but rank hypocrisy.

    If another national team were in the same situation that the USMNT found itself after Balogun was hit with that questionable (at best) red card last Wednesday against Bosnia and Herzegovina, its president or prime minister would have done the same thing Trump did, right? Any means necessary in an every-country-for-itself system, right?

    USMNT blown out of World Cup with a 4-1 loss to Belgium in the round of 16

    Wrong. The corrective to dishonor and dishonesty isn’t to do more dishonorable things. Yet that was the remedy that Trump sought and put Team USA in the position of accepting. No, Balogun never deserved a red card and the subsequent suspension. Yes, it was a terrible call. But terrible calls happen at all levels of sports, because sports — at least until the gamblers and robots take them over completely — are officiated and overseen by human beings, and errors and mistakes are part of the game.

    Stuff happens, and you deal with it as best as you can, and no one gets a do-over days later just because Donald Trump says so. His actions wouldn’t have been appropriate in youth soccer — imagine a parent of a punished player pressuring a league’s commissioner to lift a suspension and the commissioner giving in — let alone in the biggest sporting event on the globe.

    What’s more, Trump and those who supported or tolerated his interference in The Balogun Affair apparently never stopped to consider that he might be damaging his own national team’s chances. In that 2-0 victory over Bosnia, Balogun’s teammates not only survived the final 26-plus minutes of the match without him but also scored shorthanded to extend their lead.

    Watch: USMNT fans ride a wave of emotions during the first half against Belgium

    They had become underdogs. They had acquired the momentum that comes with being a team that had to fight adversity and had given a strong indication that it could overcome it.

    But once FIFA reversed its decision, that entire narrative — that sense that the USMNT might use Balogun’s suspension as inspiration and triumph in the face of an unjust call — disappeared. Now, the USMNT wasn’t the tough, resilient bunch that could withstand the absence of its best player. Now it was so out of its depth without Balogun that it needed the shady political boss to cut a deal in the smoke-filled room to bail it out.

    Belgium players react after their team scored one of four goals against the United States in Monday’s round-of-16 World Cup match. RUTH FREMSON

    Well, the Americans fit that pathetic profile Monday night. They allowed Belgium to take an early lead, then gave up the winning goal just 61 seconds after Malik Tillman tied the game at 1, then conspired to commit a crushing gaffe when goalkeeper Matt Freese played the ball outside the box, burped it up, and watched Hans Vanaken roll a shot past him for a two-goal Belgium edge.

    They were outplayed, outmatched, and outclassed, their performance all the more humiliating for the strings that their president had pulled for them, for the message that he had sent about their chances.

    Before Auston Trusty scored a World Cup goal, he ‘put the work in’ at Penncrest High and Nether United

    Donald Trump told the world that these athletes needed a man willing to act like a mob boss to make things easier for them, that the USMNT wasn’t strong enough to take home victory on its own and without his help. It turned out he was right. He treated them like losers, and on Monday night, they met his expectations.

    What an un-American way to bow out.

  • Joe Banner reveals Howie Roseman’s greatest hit on Philly guy Cliff Stein’s new podcast

    Joe Banner reveals Howie Roseman’s greatest hit on Philly guy Cliff Stein’s new podcast

    In a world full of blowhard self-promoters who lack expertise in anything outside hat-backward bro-chat, it’s refreshing to hear smart guys talk about interesting stuff in plain words.

    That’s what you’ll get when you find Episode 12 of the Negotiation Warriors podcast on YouTube. On the podcast, former Chicago Bears executive Cliff Stein spends 75 minutes discussing the evolution of NFL front-office practices with a certain former Eagles and Cleveland Browns executive.

    The episode is titled “The Salary Cap Godfather with Joe Banner.”

    This is not hyperbole.

    Banner entered the NFL in 1994 as the salary cap and free agency became the league’s most important drivers of roster construction. Banner was, simply, smarter and braver than almost everybody else making those decisions. It was he who designed the template for salary-cap management, free-agent pursuit, and, to a degree, the maximization of early- and late-round draft pick evaluation.

    Banner (with an assist from his then-administrative assistant, Lee Ann Hartley, who gets name-dropped in the episode), also invented Howie Roseman, who since has led the Eagles to three Super Bowls, two championships, and today generally is considered the NFL’s top executive.

    But everybody has a godfather.

    Banner served a similar role to Stein, a North Philly kid who played receiver for Ron Cohen at George Washington High School and rose from fringe-player agent to the role of senior vice president for 22 years with the Bears, until regime change in 2023 ended his tenure.

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    Stein, 59, then became a consultant for college programs dealing with NIL challenges, helped develop software called Front Office 360 to help schools manage their salary caps, and, of course, started the pod. He’s already hosted super-agents Drew Rosenhaus and Peter Schaffer, and he has about 30 more in the bank. None, he said, was as rewarding as the Banner pod.

    “He’s not known as a very tall man, but he is a giant when it comes to negotiations,” Stein says, introducing Banner in anatomically and metaphorically appropriate terms.

    Why Banner? Why now?

    Because the business of the NFL was uncharted territory in the mid-’90s. Banner was Magellan. Now semiretired and semiforgotten by a generation that uses his methods but has no appreciation of their origins, it is important to Stein to shine light on Banner’s massive contribution, from negotiating stadium deals to navigating the cap to assigning values to players on the front and back ends of their careers.

    “My biggest takeaway was the value of a negotiator in the role of a GM, and to show that’s what he was doing,” Stein said.

    Banner’s one of the most respected sports executives, one of the most brilliant minds and canniest negotiators the NFL has ever seen. Some would even call him the Godfather.

    From North Philly to the South Side

    Stein got his business and law degrees at Temple, then began work as a union lawyer in 1994 when he also got his NFL agent’s license. Three years later he partnered with Jerrold Colton, continued his law practice, and acted as agent for a few low-level players such as former Eagles offensive lineman Jerry Crafts and kick returner Michael “Beer Man” Lewis, the 29-year-old Arena Football League speedster who delivered Budweiser but did not play college football. The Eagles cut Lewis in 2000, but he eventually reached the Pro Bowl with the Saints.

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    In 2002, the Bears solicited Stein’s application to be their contract negotiator. He spent much of the next 22 years in that role and several others as senior vice president and general counsel, a vital adviser for Bears executives and ownership, until Kevin Warren was hired as president in 2023 and dismissed him.

    Banner was instrumental in nurturing Stein’s development.

    The podcast is 75 minutes of two of the deepest sorts of sports insiders discussing not only the inner workings of the NFL’s well-cloaked business models and practices but also the origins of those practices in the salary-cap, free-agency world, the very creation of which they played a crucial role.

    Detail-oriented pod

    That’s the word that keeps popping up: detail. Banner’s philosophy in preparing to negotiate: be detailed. The key trait in every hire Banner makes or recommends: obsession with detail.

    Stein learned from Banner, and the stories in the podcast episode are clinically detailed.

    They discuss how, under Banner, the Eagles used principals of analytics years before the Moneyball revolution coalesced in the later 2000s.

    The most poignant anecdote involves Roseman’s biggest hit. In 2004, as a low-level assistant — director of football administration — Roseman, in his fifth year with the organization, was eager to add a kid named Jason Peters. At that time, Peters not only was a rookie tight end, but he was on the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad. It would have cost the Eagles nothing to acquire him except a minimum salary. Coach Andy Reid didn’t want to use the roster spot for Peters.

    Who is Julian Lurie?

    Four years later, again at the insistence of Roseman, who now was vice president of player personnel, Banner traded three picks for Peters, gave him a six-year, $60 million contract, and watched him go to seven of the next eight Pro Bowls.

    Joe Banner (center) and Jeffrey Lurie (left) came to the Eagles in 1994. YONG KIM / Staff

    Banner had more stories Sunday afternoon, stories that didn’t make the pod. Such as:

    Lurie bought the Birds in 1994, the same year Stein got into the agent game. As newcomers, Banner thought it would be wise to introduce himself and Lurie by entertaining the adversaries.

    In October 1994, at the owners’ meetings in Chicago, Banner and Lurie hosted a cocktail hour for the Eagles’ agents at the time. This was tantamount to Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, inviting Jefferson Davis and his generals to Thanksgiving dinner. The other owners and league office were furious.

    Banner claimed ignorance.

    “We were flagrantly breaking the ‘rules,’” Banner said, “But we honestly didn’t realize how bad a line we were crossing.”

    When Stein was with the Bears, they regularly crossed that line.

    Later in the podcast, in addressing the number of front-office executives who began their careers under Banner, Stein recalled his introduction to Roseman.

    For months, Hartley had received and rebuffed Roseman’s daily letters pleading to join the Eagles — a plea he sent to virtually every other team, too — in any capacity. Roseman’s persistence impressed her, which, Stein said, was key: “I knew that if someone like Lee Ann likes you, you’re going to get the respect of Joe Banner and Jeffrey Lurie.”

    In 2000, after Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum met and vetted Roseman — a Fordham Law graduate, just like Stein — Banner finally relented and gave Howie an interview.

    “I think I saw a little of me in him,” Banner said.

    Banner then fired his current numbers guy and hired Roseman, who took up residency on the corner of Hartley’s desk outside of Banner’s office on the fourth floor of Veterans Stadium. And the rest, as they say, is history.

    Fast forward

    Stein says he’s content to continue his life in Chicago to be near his two grown children, unless some team comes at him with an offer he can’t refuse. For now, he’s eager to plumb the podcast depths. He says he’s gotten a commitment from an executive who said he’d never do a podcast but changed his mind after seeing the Rosenhaus pod.

    Until then, Stein is positively giddy at the chance that the Eagles might make Hartley available for an episode. She now is the vice president and senior adviser to Lurie; essentially, the job she used to do for the president she now does for the owner.

    Imagine the stories she could tell.

    “I’m going to do a behind-the-scenes on someone who knows everything about the business, part of the NFL population that never gets credit,” Stein said. “To have her as a potential guest? I mean, she’s half the reason Howie got hired!”

    As for Banner, he left the Eagles in 2012 to become Cleveland’s CEO, but he was out by 2014. He’s been an adjunct professor at Villanova, a role in which Stein, still in Illinois, now serves at Northwestern. Banner has acted as a consultant on dozens of NFL coach and executive searches; cofounded the 33rd Team group of football consultants with Tannenbaum; acted as an adviser during the 2021 NFL CBA negotiations; and has sat on the board of Patricof Co, a venture capital firm that caters to pro athletes.

    In his dotage, Banner, like so many, splits time between Maine and Florida, enjoys his grandchildren, and hopes to stay relevant and appreciated.

    The pod, and maybe this column, will serve that end.

    “I gotta say, I feel like that 45-year-old golfer who’s leading the Masters after the first round,” Banner said with a chuckle.

    Well, Jack Nicklaus won it at the age of 46. Banner might not be the Nicklaus of the NFL, but he’s at least the Fred Couples of the boardrooms.

    He deserves this moment, and many, many more.