Not all Philly GMs Are Created Equal
March 10, 2025
As Howie Roseman continued to prove that being the GM of a major pro sports team is not rocket science, two other local general managers continue languishing on the launching pad because have no clue how to do their jobs.
What the hell are Daryl Morey and Danny Briere doing to brighten up our dark sports winters in Philadelphia?
As far as I can tell, nothing.
In fact, nothing would be an improvement over this.
First of all, more kudos are in order for the ranking NFL champion Roseman after securing last week the long-term services of Saquon Barkley and Zack Baun, two major reasons why there was a parade here last month. When Howie wants to keep a player, he does it – despite the salary cap, the bidding of other teams or the demanding nature of our city.
Howie is no longer the best GM in the NFL. He’s No. 1 now in all of sports. It’s a no-brainer.
And speaking of no-brainers, please take a stab at explaining the thought process of Daryl Morey and his dead-on-arrival 2024-25 Sixers team. Is there any way to justify the idiotic contracts Morey handed out last off-season to two veteran players who have mastered the art of getting hurt?
If I call 9-1-1 and report a burglary in progress, will the police investigate the $400-million theft being engineered in plain sight right now by Joel Embiid and Paul George?
For reasons only he could explain – if he cared enough about the fans to answer questions honestly – Morey felt compelled to add three years and $192 million to Embiid’s contract last off-season, despite the pouty center’s ability to stay healthy for only 39 games the previous year.
Embiid will turn 31 next week. His knees are approaching 60. And his attitude, as usual, stinks. He was shut down for the season recently after playing 19 uninspired games. His career is on life support already.
The only category Embiid figures to lead for the rest of his career will be players in sports who are the most overpaid. (For example, when he’s 35, Embiid is scheduled to steal $64 million in the final year of his contract.)
After the insane Embiid extension, Morey didn’t have to double down on a Process that has already failed spectacularly, but he did so anyway. Morey handed out more stupid money when he completed a $211-million, four-year deal for an injury-in-waiting named Paul George. The only thing missing at the news conference after that deal was a laugh track.
To the shock of no one (except Morey), George has been on the injured list as often as he’s been in the opening lineup. And when he has played, at 34, he has looked like a player more interested in collecting checks than points or assists.
If you’re keeping track at home, those two deals alone accounted for $400 million dollars of owner Josh Harris’s money. And even worse, the outrageous contracts will be there to drain the money available under the salary cap long after the players have limped away.
Morey is too much of an egomaniac to ever try this helpful exercise, but he would be wise to ask, before every future move he is considering: “What would Howie do?”
Rest assured, the Eagles GM would not be signing 35-year-old has-beens to $200-million contracts, nor men-children like Embiid to extensions his knees will never be able to fulfill.
Daryl Morey has been the GM of the Sixers for five fruitless seasons.
When is enough enough?
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And then there’s Danny Briere, who just managed to kick the can further down the road at the trade deadline by unloading one of his best players, Scott Laughton, and other stuff to Toronto for a conditional 2027 first-round pick.
As things stand right now, I doubt Briere will be here in two years to make that pick. And I will shed no tears if that happens.
Briere represents everything that has been wrong in the last two generations for the Flyers, a great former player who ascended to the GM job for no better reason than he once wore, with honor, the orange-and-black sweater.
I must offer a disclaimer here. In August 2023, I was recruited by my former co-host and current Flyers president Keith Jones to talk to the team’s front office about how to relate to the Philadelphia media. Having watched him since he was named GM a few months earlier, I knew Briere would be the biggest challenge.
At one point in the seminar, I told Danny that the words “no comment” were synonymous with “screw you” to a Flyers fans. I preached the need for the Flyers to become more relevant, a step that would require more accessibility and more honesty from the talking heads.
It’s one thing to have a bad team. It’s another to have a bad team that bores its fans to death. The Flyers have been doing both for far too long.
And the reason for this maddening cycle should be painfully obvious by now. Since the heyday of the organization in the mid-1970s – under the brilliant guidance of Hall of Fame GM Keith Allen – the organization has rewarded its best players by handing them the title of GM.
As a result, fans not only had to endure dysfunctional rosters but also the attitude of elite players who carried their arrogance over to the front office. Bob Clarke, Paul Holmgren, Ron Hextall and now Danny Briere have done little to improve the team and even less to promote it.
Briere learned nothing from our session together. He may be the least compelling of those ex-player GMs, despite the influence of a media-savvy boss like Jonesy.
Six weeks ago Briere actually took a shot at the media during his midseason news conference when he dismissed the idea of making some dramatic moves for his team, which at the time was on the fringe of the playoff picture.
“I understand you guys want some work and would like a trade to keep you busy,’ he said, “but the reality is, if we force something . . . . we can’t press undo and start from scratch again, so we have to be sure.”
As someone who once covered the Flyers for the Inquirer, I feel qualified to say that most of the writers on that beat are using it as a steppingstone to covering a team that actually matters here. The last thing they need to hear from a GM is a lecture on how the media feels about his irrelevant team.
As far as I’m concerned, the honeymoon is over for Briere, just as it ended for the failed former stars who preceded him in the GM seat. Never mind a honeymoon. It’s getting close to calling in the lawyers and the moving vans.
How bad are the Flyers right now?
Even the one voice in the organization who knows how to stir things up, coach John Tortorella, has been shockingly uninteresting lately. The boredom on the Flyers is contagious.
It needs to end, now. Asking the fans to put up with losing teams and arrogant GMs needs to stop now, while there are still a few fans left who remember what a great hockey town this was 50 years ago.
Serving as a GM these days can be a challenging job, but not nearly as difficult as Morey and Briere are making it look. The fans will be happy with a competitive team and a GM who answers questions openly, a GM who cares enough to share the experience of building the roster of their favorite team.
It’s clear that Morey and Briere are not that type of GM. It’s becoming more obvious than ever that they have no idea, and no compulsion to learn, what matters to the fans.
Hey, is there any way Howie Roseman, in his spare time, could serve as GM of the Sixers and Flyers, too?