Would Daryl Morey still be here if the Sixers had slowed the Knicks’ runaway train? At least one NBA source thinks so.

The question has lingered.

Would Sixers owner Josh Harris have fired president Daryl Morey if the Knicks hadn’t rolled the Sixers?

Working big sporting events can be an exercise in frustration. The Olympics, the World Cup, the Super Bowl, the World Series are objects of spectacle and celebration for a sports fan but can be vehicles of exclusion and futility for a sports writer.

They also can be veins of golden intel. Such was the case last week in New York.

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Thanks to the vanity of the New Yorker in Chief, entering the arena last week was a protracted challenge. An NBA source with ties to the 76ers told me in the hours before Game 3, as we waited for President Trump to arrive:

“You know, if the Sixers had won a couple of games against the Knicks, no way Morey gets fired.”

That piqued my interest. The Knicks had swept the Sixers in the second round of the playoffs. Morey was fired two days later, news that shocked the NBA world.

Did the Knicks’ storybook run to the hoop-crazed city’s first title in 53 years make Morey’s career an unlikely casualty? Did the sweep cost Morey his job? Was it at least the final straw?

Apparently so.

The Knicks weren’t considered elite when they rolled the Sixers. By Game 3 of the Finals, however, they were playing great.

Folks were talking: Was Morey’s firing less warranted than it seemed at the time?

I was eager to leave Madison Square Garden and try to track down Morey himself, see what he’d say. He’s going to continue to live in Philadelphia, but, since he got fired, he’s been hanging out in New York, feeding his Broadway addiction and waiting for the unemployment checks to come in.

Then, a few hours later, the Knicks had lost Game 3, the Spurs seemed to have turned a corner, and the assertion lost its legs.

But only briefly.

A computer scientist with an MBA from MIT, Morey’s moves might draw criticism but his intellect never has been in question. Twenty-one years ago he co-founded the annual analytics nerd-fest at MIT, the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, a stats-based Davos gathering of the smartest suits in the sports industry, designed to render obsolete knuckle-draggers like Doc Rivers and me.

Despite having never won a title, Morey is front-office royalty. As such, the NBA was rocked by Morey’s dismissal, especially coming, as it did, on the heels of such a dizzying postseason high.

The week before the sweep, the Sixers beat the arch rival Celtics in seven games to win their first-round series. Boston had held a 15-7 record in the teams’ playoff series and had won the last six; the last time the Sixers won was 1982. It was their first Game 7 win in 25 years. It was their first Game 7 road win in 44 years (the aforementioned 1982 series). It was the first time the Sixers won a series when trailing, 3-1, in their last 18 tries, and the Celtics had won 32 times in a row when leading a series 3-1.

Euphoria barely describes the mood around the franchise after Tyrese Maxey dropped 30 points and pulled 11 rebounds in that Game 7. Maxey was Morey’s first draft pick when he arrived in 2020.

Humiliation barely describes the mood around the franchise 10 days later. The Knicks won Game 1 in New York by 39 points. They won Game 4 in Philadelphia by 30 and, at one point, they led by 44. That wasn’t the worst of it. Xfinity Mobile Arena was inundated with Knicks fans for Game 3 and was predominantly pro-Knicks in Game 4.

Harris, a New Yorker for most of his adult life, was galled. More than anything else, according to the source, it was those two home losses and the Knicks fans’ takeover that cost Morey.

It didn‘t help, of course, that Morey traded popular shooter Jared McCain in February, after which McCain thrived in Oklahoma City. It also didn‘t help that, two years ago, Morey max-extended the contract of Joel Embiid and max-signed Paul George. Both have been injured and suspended since.

Both were bigger stars than anyone on New York’s team. Neither played well against the Knicks.

As it turned out, nobody would play well against the Knicks.

The Knicks’ sweep of the Sixers included wins three through six of 13 playoff wins in a row, the second-best streak in NBA history and just two fewer than the Warriors in 2017. Those Warriors had both Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, Hall of Fame scorers who’d been to 12 All-Star Games between them.

Again, at the time of the Sixers series, nobody considered any of the Knicks on par with Steph or KD.

Then, the Knicks swept the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Then, they won Games 1 and 2 in San Antonio.

Then, after losing Game 3 at home, they executed a Finals- record 29-point comeback in Game 4.

Then, on Saturday, they won Game 5 and the title in San Antonio. Jalen Brunson proved himself the biggest star in the playoffs, capping his Finals average of 32.6 points with 45 in the closeout game, a record for a Knick in the Finals, tied with Michael Jordan for the third-most in a Finals closeout game.

The Knicks finished the playoffs with a point differential of plus-283, the biggest in NBA history. Of course, the Sixers contributed 89 of those positive points, and the Knicks played only one team from the superior Western Conference, but those arguments are thin gruel.

The 2025-26 Knicks were a powerhouse team: deep, talented, hungry, well-coached, and led by a bona fide, if unlikely, superstar.

That’s who beat the Sixers.

That’s who, according to an NBA source, ultimately cost Morey his job.

I’ve always believed Morey to be a bit overrated as a team builder but I’ve always admired his innovation, his transparency, and intellectual capacity. These, I believe, burnished an image that was more impressive than the reality. He was, nevertheless, a very good basketball president.

Still, when a team with high expectations repeatedly fails to meet them, change is almost always good. Embiid just ate his way into wasting two more seasons. Paul George popped for PEDs. Both happened on Morey’s watch. Will it happen again under his replacement, Mike Gansey, who helped resurrect the Cavaliers after the LeBron James Era, Part 2? Will Gansey and his overseer, Bob Myers, the former Warriors president who runs all of Harris’ numerous sports franchises, keep the old guys from stealing more money?

Maybe.

Maybe a new sheriff in town who has no connection to either Embiid or George will serve as a catalyst for them to deliver more value for the combined $112 million they will make in the next season alone.

But maybe, had Harris known how humiliated his peers in Cleveland and San Antonio were going to be a month later, he wouldn’t have let go the man he’d introduced six years prior as “extraordinary,” an “innovator,” and a “visionary.”

Then again, maybe he would have.