At least Josh Harris has had practice with Philly fans shooting him the bird.
Drunks have done it, of course. But so have sober coeds. Everyone in Philly is a potential middle finger-giver when their team stinks. And, right now, the 76ers — one of the other pro sports teams Harris owns — currently stink, having had to play most of the year without franchise lynchpin Joel Embiid, who’s been injured.
So, when Harris sits courtside at Wells Fargo Center to watch the 76ers, he often hears from the multitudes. In Philly, the multitudes don’t sing in angelic harmony. They scream and cuss.
Life in the big city.
So the majority owner of the Washington Commanders knows full well what’s in store when he returns to the City of Brotherly Love Sunday with his football team, with a Super Bowl berth at stake, to play against the city’s beloved Eagles.
The Eagles beat the New England Patriots to win Super Bowl LII following the 2017 season, lost a heartbreaking Super Bowl LVII to the Kansas City Chiefs two years ago and desperately want to raise the Lombardi Trophy again. To get to New Orleans and Super Bowl LIX by knocking off Harris’ Commanders would be doubly sweet for the Illadelph.
Many who live there, these days, are not Harris fans.
“Look, I think it’s going to be hard. Philly fans are passionate about their team,” Harris said from a hotel room in Toronto, where his businesses had taken him earlier this week.
“For me, or anyone else, playing in Philly in the NFC Championship Game and seeing their passion for their team, is tremendous,” he continued. “They make it hard on the opposing teams, and they make it hard on everyone. Yes, I have an extra special place in that.
“But I think no matter who you are, if you come in and you’re playing in Philly, and you’re playing the Eagles, and you’re playing against that team, with those fans, they’re going to make it hard on you. So we’re all going in knowing that. But listen, when I went to Detroit, you couldn’t even hear. It was so loud. … I was thinking, ‘How does Jayden (Daniels), how is the offense going to function?’ And they just powered through it.
“Our team seems to be able to handle these situations. We play well on the road. … I just have faith that we’re going to go in and do what we have to do. That’s what I’m expecting and hoping for, and I fully expect Philly to unleash on all of us.”
The subplot involving Harris, Philadelphia and the 76ers — and, across the state line, the NHL’s New Jersey Devils, who Harris also owns — is so deliciously twisted. But it shouldn’t overshadow the main thing, at least the main thing in Washington.
A year and a half after spending $6.08 billion to buy the Commanders from Dan Snyder, Harris has done nothing but roll sevens and restore a tarnished and battered franchise to its previous place as the top sports entity in the DMV. (A million years ago, when I was the team’s reporter for the Washington Post, I was told the most important beat in town was covering the President of the United States. The second most important beat in town was covering the football team. The person who told me this wasn’t smiling.)
Harris hired Adam Peters from the San Francisco 49ers to be the team’s general manager. Then he hired Bob Myers from the four-time NBA champion Golden State Warriors as an adviser and consultant. Harris, Peters and Myers picked Dan Quinn from Dallas to coach the team, as the popular choice outside the building for the job, then-Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, passed on the opportunity.
Harris, Peters, Myers and Quinn picked Daniels to be their franchise quarterback. Daniels and his preternatural abilities have taken it from there. His spectacular season has sped up the internal timeline for the Commanders’ contending window and for a potential new stadium for his team within the next few years.
GO DEEPER
In Jayden Daniels, Washington’s Super Bowl-winning QBs see one of their own
Harris will, no doubt, make significant mistakes during his ownership of the Commanders. Hasn’t happened yet, though. He has shown, so far, to be much more than Not Snyder.
“Obviously, we have what looks to be an elite quarterback in his first year,” Harris said. “You have the rookie scale, which allows for you to then create free agents around him who do other things, instead of paying an elite quarterback. And Adam and Dan, to a large extent, when I watched the draft or free agency, whether it’s (Mike) Sainristil or Jayden, their picks have been remarkable. Dan built an amazing staff — we’re trying to keep it together right now. They were relatively superb at what they did. And people want to be a part of this.
“Everybody’s having a good time. All the vets are sort of like, ‘Yeah, we could stay here. Let’s go.’ … But I mean, right now, we’re totally focused on Sunday. And they’re focused on Sunday.”
Harris was in the locker room last weekend alongside Peters and Quinn after Washington upset the top-seeded Lions, 45-31, listening to the sounds of a deliriously happy team, soaking it all in.
“I don’t know other teams, but they do, and they say it’s very unusual how together the whole locker room is, how much belief there is,” Harris said. “But there was no way to predict it. Nobody predicted it. I mean, I didn’t predict it. So we’re just riding it and trying to be supportive of it, and enhancing it any way we can.”
GO DEEPER
The Commanders are a win away from the Super Bowl. Let that marinate for a bit
After a crazy night in the U.S. Senate on Dec. 20, Harris has a chance to make a deal to build a new stadium on what is clearly his preference: the RFK Stadium footprint, and the 177 acres of potential mixed-use economic nirvana a project with a new stadium as its anchor could provide.
The Senate, somehow after Congress excised language in a short-term spending bill two days earlier that would have given D.C. control of the RFK site to the city, unanimously passed a continuing resolution that restored the controlling mechanism over the RFK site. Harris needed all 100 senators to agree — or, at least, not to raise an objection to the CR.
No one did.
Harris, who had existing relationships with multiple senators from his years in business, first for Apollo Global, and his latest venture capital endeavor, 26North, worked the phones in the final hours — along with others in his leadership team — to assuage senators who were uncertain about voting yes for the bill to do so, according to local city sources.
Now, the District can do whatever it wants with the land. What Mayor Muriel Bowser, most assuredly, wants to do is build a new Commanders stadium 28 years after the team left RFK for what is now Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md.
And with the wildly unexpected run of the Commanders this season, with a charismatic, young franchise quarterback set to be the face of the franchise for the next decade, Harris has all the juice as he enters advanced discussions with the city on a potential deal for a new stadium on the RFK site. The city will have to come up with legislation to present to the Council, just as it did in pushing forward a bill that committed $515 million in public funding last month toward renovations of Capital One Arena, the home of the NBA’s Wizards and NHL’s Capitals.
GO DEEPER
Wizards, Capitals commit to D.C.; Capital One Arena $515M renovation coming
“Clearly, the feelings that I had about the team, a lot of people had about them, right?” Harris said. “It’s been since 1991 that the DMV and the city have experienced this. So I think there is real momentum. Obviously, capitalizing on that momentum, capitalizing on how the people feel, those are the constituents, the people who are going to decide what happens. … I think there is this notion that we should try to accelerate that, and that goes for Maryland and (Gov.) Wes Moore, and D.C. and the mayor. D.C. has said, the mayor’s said publicly, that she wants to get this done quickly, this year. And I think we’re supportive of that, and I understand that. …
“But, clearly, what’s happened on the field is something that we should keep an eye on, and we are keeping an eye on it, and how do we move forward quickly?”
Harris insists he doesn’t yet know where the next Commanders stadium will be. His enthusiasm about the RFK site, though, gives him away.
“Well, I know, we’ve been pretty clear what’s the right thing to bring the city together,” he said. “But we’re starting the appropriate political process, so I don’t know where that’s all going to come out, and what’s going to be allowed, and what land we’re going to be given. I have a vision. I have sketches of what it would be. The notion that you would have RFK, in line with the Capitol and the Washington Monument, right by the Anacostia River, connecting to Nationals Park, with all the land, it’s a breathtaking opportunity.”
Harris likes to move quickly. He was well aware, and troubled by, the NFL Players Association survey last year in which Commanders players ranked the franchise last in the league in working conditions, receiving an overall grade of F-minus. That included F-minuses in three of 11 categories, including the locker room, training room and treatment of families.
Though the poll was much more a reflection of the conditions Harris inherited from previous ownership, it nonetheless stung. With Peters as a guide, Harris has invested significantly in the last year to upgrade the players’ recovery and rehabilitation areas at Commanders Park and hired more trainers to work with players.
“He wants to know, ‘What’s best in class?’” a league source said.
Harris ripped out the old, awful artificial turf field that blighted Commanders Park. He and his group spent $75 million last offseason trying to make Northwest Stadium a more palatable game day experience. But, his MO is to drive his people to the right answer — relentlessly — and leave no question unasked before doing so.
“Everybody’s got the same information,” said Marc Lasry, former majority owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks who’s worked with Harris over the years. “It’s what you do with that information. His skill set is taking all that information and synthesizing it into what’s important. That’s what he’s done in business, and that’s what he’s done in sports.”
An NFL source who’s worked with Harris this year said, “You’ve got to show your work. It’s a math problem. If you show your work, you’re good.”
Every Monday during the NFL season — the Commanders’ famed “Tell the Truth Mondays” — Harris gets on a video call with Quinn, Peters and Myers. Quinn shows the group anywhere from six to 10 plays from their most recent game.
“I specifically like those times as a coach, so I can show, ‘This is what we were thinking, this is what happened,’” Quinn said Wednesday. “So it’s a good way to highlight the player, the moment, the situation. Why we chose to do what we did. And it’s good, ’cause I want (Harris) to be able to ask anything: ‘Why’d you go for it? Why’d you do that?’ He’s curious that way.
“We didn’t do that in the first game. So I was trying to explain stuff, and it was just clunky. … And so that, to me, has been something, wherever that meeting is taking place (for Harris), all over the world, literally, I’ve really enjoyed that. … I really respect that he always has time for Adam and I.”
Harris signed off on the controversial “Process” in Philadelphia, which called for consistent, years-long tanking to get as many chances at the top of the NBA Draft as possible. The results have been decidedly mixed. The Sixers got Embiid with the third pick in 2014, but he missed two years after numerous surgeries. Yet in 2023, he was the NBA’s MVP.
Josh Harris’ rebuilding strategy, famously known as “The Process,” helped the 76ers land 2022-23 NBA MVP Joel Embiid with the third pick in the 2014 draft. (Eric Hartline / USA Today)
The 76ers weren’t close to being a contender before The Process — they’ve now made the playoffs seven straight years. But, they haven’t gotten past the second round, despite bringing in Daryl Morey as general manager in 2020 and bringing in NBA championship-winning head coaches Doc Rivers and Nick Nurse.
The frustration level in Philly with the basketball team is immense. But Harris is adamant that it hasn’t lessened his involvement and interest in the team as his pro football squad has caught fire.
“We’re disappointed, we’re all disappointed with where we are with the Sixers,” Harris said. “Both these teams have true meaning to me. Obviously, I grew up in Washington. I walked down East Capitol St. (to attend games). But, my mom grew up right near Temple University in a row house. My grandfather was a U.S. Postal Worker there, and I used to visit them. And when I went to Penn, I saw the Sixers win the NBA title … and I saw the ticker-tape parade. That stayed with me. And that team, through Barkley, Iverson — and I was there for Sixers-Lakers (in the 2001 Finals). I was there for all of that.
“It’s exactly the same, for me — Washington football and Philly basketball. I know a lot of people have had different experiences than me, and maybe they’ve grown up with all the teams in Philly. But … the honest answer is, I’m truly passionate about both teams. When we show up on Sunday, I’m going to be doing everything I can do to hopefully have us do what we have to do, and win. At the same time, it doesn’t mean I can’t show up and do the same thing for the 76ers that week. That’s just the way I feel, genuinely. But I do understand why, for some people in Philly, they might not understand that, because they’ve had different life experiences than me. But I work just as hard for the Sixers in basketball as I do for Washington in football.”
Harris has certainly learned both from The Process and from his most recent tussle. He walked away from a potential arena deal in Philly’s Center City to do a joint new building near the current Wells Fargo Arena in South Philly with Comcast, the media behemoth with whom Harris had previously sparred for two years. Comcast controls and runs Wells Fargo; the 76ers were just a tenant there. The Center City deal would have given the basketball team its own building, in a controversial development near the city’s Chinatown neighborhood that had significant local opposition.
Yet Harris acquiesced at the 11th hour. At the behest of NBA commissioner Adam Silver — “He did broker the meeting,” Harris says now — Harris met with Comcast chair and CEO Brian Roberts and the two quickly worked out a new arena deal, to be paid for 50-50.
“They had been in one place, we had been in another,” Harris says. “But that’s how deals are, sometimes. They come together quickly. You’ve got to do what’s right. Ultimately, we just decided to do what’s right with the city. We went to (Philadelphia) Mayor (Cherelle Parker), we went to a lot of the other Council people, and we just told them we thought this was best for the city. And after a little consternation, they agreed.”
Come Sunday, though, Harris’ rooting interests will be for another city.
Tickets are likely to be among the most expensive in the history of NFC title games. The Commanders understand Lincoln Financial Field will be heavily green, with not many Washington fans able to nab seats from the Eagles’ rabid fan base.
For a third straight playoff weekend, Washington will be a sizable underdog. As for Harris, he’ll be ready for what comes his way.
“It’ll be a very intense day for me,” he says. “I’m going to be fully locked in on supporting Dan and supporting Adam and supporting our players. They’ve got to go do it. It’s not about me. I think that Jayden has proven himself to be in a league of his own in terms of being able to handle these high-pressure situations. It’s not going to be easy. Saquon (Barkley)’s great. The Eagles are great in a lot of ways. I’m hoping we’re going to do what we’ve got to do. That’s what I expect.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
