June 15, 1986: The Draft Day Debacle of the Philadelphia 76ers

Moses Malone

June 15, 1986, 40 years ago: For fans of the Philadelphia 76ers, this is a day which lives in infamy.

The Sixers had made the Playoffs in each of the last 10 seasons. In 7 of them, they had reached the NBA Eastern Conference Finals. In 4 of them, they had reached the NBA Finals. And in 1983, they had won the NBA Championship.

In 1986, they lost in the First Round. By this point, they were an aging team. Julius Erving was 36 years old, and was soon to announce that the next season would be his last. Bob McAdoo and Bobby Jones were both 34, and the season that had ended just a week before would prove to be the last in the NBA for each of them.

Still, there was reason to hope that their run of success could continue. Moses Malone was 31. Maurice Cheeks was 29. Andrew Toney was 28. There was young talent on the roster, including 23-year-old Charles Barkley. And they had obtained the Number 1 pick in the NBA Draft in a trade with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Except that, 2 days before the Draft, 76ers owner Harold Katz traded that top pick, to the Cleveland Cavaliers, for Roy Hinson. The Cavs ended up using the pick on Brad Daugherty. To make matters worse, on the same day, Katz traded Malone and Terry Catledge to the Washington Bullets for Jeff Ruland and Clifford Robinson.

There was nothing wrong with wanting healthy versions of Roy Hinson, Jeff Ruland and Clifford Robinson. But Ruland only played 5 games for the Sixers before getting hurt, and retired, although he made a comeback 5 years later. And Hinson and Robinson did little in Philadelphia.

In contrast, Malone was still an All-Star as late as 1989, and still playing as late as 1995; while Daugherty made 5 All-Star Teams, and, arguably, should be in the Basketball Hall of Fame along with Malone.

The 76ers have never been the same, making only 1 NBA Finals, in 2001 with Allen Iverson. Otherwise, with Barkley, Iverson, Joel Embiid and James Harden, and under 3 different ownership regimes, the Philadelphia 76ers have been one of the most underachieving teams in North American sports.

From the NBA Finals of 1984 to that of 2025, the count of NBA Championships is as follows: Los Angeles Lakers 9, Chicago Bulls 6, San Antonio Spurs 5, Golden State Warriors 4, Boston Celtics 4, Detroit Pistons 3, Miami Heat 3, Houston Rockets 2, Dallas Mavericks 1, Cleveland Cavaliers 1, Toronto Raptors 1, Milwaukee Bucks 1, Denver Nuggets 1, Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder 1. The other 16 teams, including the Philadelphia 76ers, none. And of those 16 teams, 6 didn't even exist in 1983.

From 1983, when the Philadelphia 76ers won the NBA Championship, until 2008, when the Phillies won their next World Series, no Philadelphia professional sports team won a World Championship. Could this be the Curse of Harold Katz? No, it's usually called the Curse of Billy Penn: The suggestion was that the construction of One Liberty Place in 1987, making it taller than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall, caused Penn's spirit to put a curse on the city's teams.

October 16, 1994: The Dumbest Football Coach Who Ever Lived

October 16, 1994, 30 years ago: The Dallas Cowboys lead the Philadelphia Eagles, 24-7, at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, Texas. The Eagles score a touchdown in the 4th quarter to make it 24-13, and head coach Rich Kotite tells his team to attempt a 2-point conversion. It fails, and the 24-13 score holds until the end of the game.

Why go for 2 there? At that point, there was little difference between trailing by 10 and by 9: You still needed a touchdown and a field goal to make the difference. But failing at the 2-pointer meant trailing by 11, so you needed 2 touchdowns. Obviously, the right thing to do was to kick the extra point, and make it 24-14.

After the game, Kotite told the media, "The rain made the ink run and blurred the chart, so I couldn't see what was written on it to know what to do."

He shouldn't have needed a chart to tell him what to do! But it was worse than that: He knew it was going to rain, and didn't have a plastic sheet to protect his ink and paper. I guess Yankee Fans are lucky that the dugout protected Joe Girardi's infamous binder from the rain.

Richard Edward Kotite was born on October 13, 1942 is born in Brooklyn, and grew up on Staten Island. A tight end, he played for Wagner College on Staten Island, and was a decent player for the Giants from 1967 to 1972. Among his coaching jobs were with the New York Jets, as receivers coach in 1983 and '84, and as offensive coordinator from 1985 to 1989. He got the same job with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1990, and was promoted to head coach in 1991. In 1991 and '92, he got the Eagles into the Playoffs. In 1993, 8-8 wasn't enough to get in.

In 1994, he got the Eagles off to a 4-1 start. Then came his what-the-hell moment against the Cowboys. The Eagles would get to 7-2, leading the NFC Eastern Division. Then they lost their last 7 games, including to the Giants and the Cincinnati Bengals by 3 points each, the Arizona Cardinals by 6, and the Atlanta Falcons by 7.

The Eagles finished 7-9, missing the Playoffs, and Kotite was fired. Crap like this is what makes people in Philly go up to cops and say, "Officer, I want to report a crime: The Eagles are killing me!"

On January 4, 1995, a date which lives in infamy, Jets owner Leon Hess announced that he had hired Kotite to be the team's head coach and, effectively, also its general manager. Why Kotite? Well, he was a local guy, and a blue-collar guy who could appeal to local fans. But that shouldn't have mattered. What should have mattered was that Kotite had led the Eagles to a couple of Playoff berths.

Words that Hess should have guessed would outlive him: "I'm 80 years old. I want results now!"

He got results, all right. In 1995, the Jets went 3-13. One of those losses was the 1st regular-season win in franchise history for the expansion Carolina Panthers. (While the Panthers did reach the NFC Championship Game the next season, that 1st year, they were only 4-12.)

In 1996, the Jets had the worst season in the history of New York Tri-State Area football, 1-15. The only win came in Week 9, October 27, 31-21 away to Arizona. Two days before the team's '96 finale, GM Kotite fired Coach Kotite.

Between them, Coach Kotite and GM Kotite went 3-13 and 1-15 in his 2 seasons with the Jets. In other words, from November 7, 1994 to December 22, 1996, he went 4-35 as a head coach. That's a .103 percentage, worse than the worst single seasons in the histories of MLB (the 1899 Cleveland Spiders went 20-134, or .134), the NBA (the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers went 9-73, or .110) and the NHL (the 1974-75 Washington Capitals went 8-67-5, or .131).

Owner Hess then hired Bill Parcells, and got much better results, although Hess died before Parcells could get the ultimate result for the Jets, like he did twice for the Giants.

Kotite was just 54 years old when he left Weeb Ewbank Hall, but has never again even been hired as an assistant coach. Anywhere. Not the pros, not college, not even in high school. Even the XFL -- both the laughingstock 2001 version and the new edition that started in 2020 -- haven't touched him. That's how radioactive Rich Kotite has been. However, he has been a contributor to various NFL Network broadcasts. At 80, it's unlikely he'll ever be hired by another pro team, in any capacity.

This game could be cited as part of "The Curse of Billy Penn": From 1983, when the Philadelphia 76ers won the NBA Championship, until 2008, when the Phillies won their next World Series, no Philadelphia professional sports team won a World Championship. The suggestion was that the construction of One Liberty Place in 1987, making it taller than the statue of William Penn atop City Hall, caused Penn's spirit to put a curse on the city's teams. The Eagles didn't win a Super Bowl until 2018.