Frank Kappes felt a twinge of nostalgia last week when he heard that New Jersey officials were trying to convince the Philadelphia 76ers to cross state lines and establish a new home in Camden, NJ.
Cappes, a lawyer and deep-dive sports fan from Cranford, NJ, owned season tickets to the New Jersey Nets for two decades before ditching the team when it became clear it was moving to Brooklyn.
So when the 76ers’ owners announced they were at least considering the offer, Cappes, 74, simply smiled.
“Been there, done that,” he said. “It’s like a divorce, and when a divorce happens, you don’t look back.”
The blast has created consternation and curiosity on both sides of the state border. Sports fans are often knocked for being eccentric, but owners can be too. And a move, if one should happen, would represent only the latest episode in a lasting history of professional teams recklessly fleeing longtime homes.
The hypothetical arrival of the Sixers would also reaffirm New Jersey’s queer role as a kind of liminal space in the professional sports landscape. Five major teams play in the state, and four of them refer to New York in their official moniker. Can New Jersey host another out-of-state guest?
Michael Levine, 34, television writer who co-hosts A long-running podcast about the 76ersThe team’s owners, Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, will likely “do whatever makes the most money” and so will be enticed by a generous offer from New Jersey officials: tax breaks and incentives totaling more than $1 billion to support construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. A new arena and development on the site of a former state prison.
“Philadelphia has made fun of the New York Giants for so long for not playing in New York,” Levine said, his voice rising with indignation. “And then the Philadelphia 76ers — named after 1776! – Moving from Philadelphia to Jersey because of a tax break? And then we are mocked? That would be a shame.”
Levine noted that the team has generally been underpowered on the court over the past several years and has already compiled a “catalogue of public scandals and embarrassments” (and went on for several minutes to enumerate the catalog, which was, in fact, too confusing to contain. . in this article).
“So I don’t think people are going to abandon their Sixers fandom because of this, if they haven’t already,” he said with a laugh, “because there’s a lot of reasons to do that.”
The Sixers, who have leased space at the Well Fargo Center in South Philadelphia since 1996, are openly looking for their own space. His proposal for a $1.3 billion arena in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood has not moved forward since it was announced two years ago.
Not surprisingly, then, New Jersey’s early overtures, First reported last week by ROI-NJFans have started to consider some practical considerations.
For example, Randy Childress and his bandmates believed they had achieved a level of timelessness in 1975 when they composed “Here Come the Sixers,” which is still played at the team’s stadium today.
They didn’t name a player in the lyrics — a hedge against injuries, trades and the relentless passage of time — and never actually mentioned basketball. But Childress realized last week that the song isn’t as future-proof as she thought: The word “Philadelphia” is uttered 14 times.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do, because ‘Camden’ doesn’t really fit,” Childress said with a laugh. “There was no way to predict this.”
Then it’s a matter of what the team will be told.
Nicholas, 45, a Sixers fan from Camden who opposes moving to New Jersey because of the hefty tax breaks (and who asked that his last name be withheld because he is employed by the state), proposed Camden Soup Cans, pointing out that Campbell Soup was founded in the city.
“New Jersey is weird,” he said. “It’s right in the middle. It has its own identity, but is also overshadowed by New York and Philadelphia.
Geography in the context of sports proves a particularly fluid concept in the state.
Besides the New York Giants and New York Jets, NFL teams based in East Rutherford, NJ, there are the New York Red Bulls and NJ/NY Gotham FC, soccer teams that play in Harrison, NJ (it’s not uncommon, of course, for a team in the city to have their home (Look for the stadium to be in a neighboring locale: the Dallas Cowboys, who play in Arlington, have only one name.)
The championship match of the 2026 World Cup will be held at the MetLife Stadium, which FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has cutely named the “New York New Jersey Stadium” for the occasion, even though it is in New Jersey.
The New Jersey Devils are the only major sports franchise in New Jersey that is exclusively identified with its home state. Their owners? Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment.
And the Devils aren’t the only connection the 76ers owners have to New Jersey. The basketball team’s offices and practice facility were moved to Camden in 2016, which dark segments of Sixers fandom already saw as a half-step toward a full relocation across the river.
76 in a statement identified their Center City proposal as their ongoing priority, but reiterated the urgency to establish a new home before their current lease at the Wells Fargo Center expires.
“As a result,” the statement concluded, “we must seriously consider all possible options, including this one,” the team said of New Jersey’s offer.
Capace, a former Nets superfan, said he has nothing to lose by going after the Sixers in his beloved state. It would be a coup for the governor, he said, if it actually happened. And if it did, it would convey this simple message to Philadelphia fans: Life goes on.
Freed from the financial burden of their season tickets, Cappes and his wife remodeled their kitchen. He still clings to artifacts from the golden years of his Nets fandom — jerseys autographed by Keith Van Horn and Kerry Kittles, among others — but rarely spares a thought for the current team.
“Even if you came and offered me $1,000, I don’t think I could name a player on the Nets,” said Capace, who added that he certainly wouldn’t join the 76ers bandwagon if they moved to Camden. “The only thing northern New Jersey and southern New Jersey have in common is the license plate.”
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