The saga of Sixers president of basketbll operations Bryan Colangelo and five Twitter accounts to which he and/or his wife have been fairly convincingly linked has taken over the NBA Twittersphere this week.
That’s no mean feat, considering it’s also Finals week, but the story is just too entertaining and weird to not have taken hold, which is why it’s been the whole conversation ever since The Ringer broke it on Tuesday night. It seemed highly unlikely that Colangelo wasn’t involved in some capacity, and any doubt should have been completely removed yesterday, when it became apparent that his wife almost certainly has a connection to some of the accounts in question.
And now, via Keith Pompey of Philly.com, we know there’s a chance the Sixers investigation wraps up within a few days, maybe as early as Friday, and that some people already believe Colangelo has no chance to keep his job:
The 76ers are expected to finish their investigation into allegations against Bryan Colangelo within the next few days, if not Friday, according to league sources.
The start of the NBA Finals on Thursday between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers was a factor in the timetable, the sources said. The league did not want the controversy to distract from Game 1. The NBA has not commented publicly on the matter.
Ha, yeah, the ship has kind of sailed on that one. (Though if anything it’s helped distract from the fact that there seems to be a sense of fatigue surrounding the fourth straight year of Cavs/Warriors in the Finals.) Pompey went on to note that there are people who believe Colangelo is on his way out over this:
Some league sources expect Colangelo to lose his job as the Sixers president of basketball operations.
NBA personnel have been on the West Coast this week attending agent-run predraft workouts. Colangelo was not at those workouts the last two days.
This makes sense for the Sixers for more reasons than just the NBA Finals. With free agency and the draft fast approaching, it’s important to not only decide whether or not to move on from Colangelo, but to have the succession plan in place. Philadelphia is expected to explore the top end of the free agent market this summer, with both LeBron (duh) and Paul George obvious fits for the young Sixers.
But at this point, it’s hard to fathom Philadelphia sending Colangelo into a meeting like that; the best-case scenario for him at this point seems to be “I’ve been leaking team information to my wife who then shared it, including ripping our players.” And that scenario still means it’s going to be tough for people to trust him going forward, whether he was directly involved with those Twitter accounts or whether it was his wife.
What a ridiculous story. The Sixers, if they do make the change, will be on their third chief executive in just over two years, after Sam Hinkie resigned following the Colangelo ascension in 2016. That’s a lot of volatility for a franchise that’s seemingly done nothing but improve on the court over that time.
