76ers hire Mike Gansey, but Josh Harris is still the real problem

The 76ers have a new front office boss.

According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Mike Gansey has agreed to become the 76ers’ new president of basketball operations. He replaces Daryl Morey after the organization decided it needed a fresh start.

76ers find their guy, who knows if it’ll work

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Fine. Great. Fresh start. Put it on the press release.

The problem is that nobody really knows what this hire means yet.

Gansey has been with the Cavaliers since 2011-12 and worked his way up through the organization. He was part of a front office that helped build Cleveland into a real Eastern Conference contender. That is not nothing. The Cavs won 52 games, made the Eastern Conference finals, and were aggressive enough to make a major deadline trade.

That all sounds good on paper.

It also does not tell us what Gansey actually is as the top guy.

There is a difference between being part of a good front office and being the person trusted to fix the 76ers. Philadelphia is not hiring a supporting executive. The Sixers are hiring someone to walk into a broken franchise, clean up years of bad decisions, figure out what to do with Joel Embiid, build around Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, and somehow restore trust with a fan base that has been lied to for over a decade.

That is a different job.

Maybe Gansey is good. Maybe he is smart. Maybe he was the right person behind the scenes in Cleveland. Maybe this works.

We just do not know that yet.

What we do know is that Josh Harris still owns the team. That is the part that makes all of this feel hard to care about.

The Sixers can change the general manager. They can change the president of basketball operations. They can bring in Bob Myers to help lead the search. They can use all the right buzzwords about collaboration, vision, accountability, and a new direction.

It still all runs through Harris.

This is the same ownership group that oversaw the collapse of the Process, the Ben Simmons disaster, the James Harden disaster, the Jimmy Butler disaster, the Al Horford disaster, and whatever the last few years of Joel Embiid’s prime were supposed to be. At some point, the constant cannot keep escaping blame.

Daryl Morey needed to go. That much was obvious. The Sixers needed a new voice, a new approach, and a new plan.

But hiring Gansey does not magically fix the franchise. It does not erase the last decade. It does not prove the 76ers are finally serious. It just means they picked a new person to sit in the chair.

Now he has to prove he is more than another name under Josh Harris.

Until then, this feels like another Sixers reset that only matters if ownership finally stops being the problem.

And there is no reason to believe that part has changed.