After nine days of speculation, worry, and angst since the bombshell report from The Ringer's Ben Detrick, today the Sixers' ownership group, led by Josh Harris, and General Manager Bryan Colangelo mutually agreed to part ways. 

Sixers' Head Coach Brett Brown will assume General Manager duties on an interim basis, while the search for a new GM gets started.

The organization hired the New York Law Firm; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison LLP to conduct an independent investigation into five burner accounts connected to Colangelo, one of the accounts was already confirmed to be operated by Colangelo. Colangelo's wife Barbara Bottini was also connected to the investigation which alleged that she the main operator of the other four burner accounts.

The investigation concluded on Tuesday according to a press release from the New York Law firm. They found that Bottini "established the Twitter accounts and posted the content on those accounts". The release also noted that Bottini did a factory reset on her iPhone (some of the tweets were from an Andriod as well) prior to turning it over to the law firm for "forensic review".

Reaction and opinion

I honestly cannot believe that it took so long to make a decision that should have been so simple to make THE DAY The Ringer report came out but at least this Ownership group made the right decision in the end. There were legitimate concerns from Sixers fans, including myself, that the organization would somehow find a way to keep Colangelo as the GM. The information in the tweets was too damaging to retain Colangelo and hope that the players slandered in those tweets, would trust him again, or that prospective free agents this summer --one of which is a top 2 player of all-time, and joked about the whole episode-- would want to sign up under a GM that was responsible for those tweets directly or indirectly. 

I, myself, can't emphasize the tweets slandering current and former players enough, especially the superstar franchise player, Joel Embiid. There was no way Colangelo could come back with Embiid knowing that those tweets came from Colangelo in some forms.

Just look at the list of disparaging remarks from the tweets:

• Called him a "fool"
• "Wanting to kick his butt"
• Called him "fragile and weak"
• questioned his ability to be a franchise player
• Wanting to trade him for Kristaps Porzingis
• Said that "he wasn't a leader"
• Big Ego
• Called him "Selfish"
• Called him a "Tool"
• Called him "Lazy"
• Caping for Ben Simmons and knocking down Embiid at the same time.
• Called him a "big selfish baby"
• "Playing like a toddler having tantrums"

How the hell can you reconcile that? And that's not even mentioning the tweets about the coaching staff decisions, Markelle Fultz' struggles this year both on the court and personal issues, the tweets about medical information related to former player Jahlil Okafor, and trashing former-Sixer Nerlans Noel, who certainly had some thoughts on the whole thing today.

Nerlens Noel weighs in, part 2 pic.twitter.com/TTiOF51IH7

— Kyle Neubeck (@KyleNeubeck) June 7, 2018

Whether you believe Colangelo had no knowledge of the other 4 twitter accounts --which by the way I don't buy for one damn second-- there was no way you could justify him keeping his job because in some shape or form the information in those tweets were things only things people inside the organization would know. Not only that, the reaction from around the league, players, GMs on Twitter and even Owners on Twitter have pegged the Sixers as a giant laughingstock. We have an NBA Finals series going on and the Sixers have somehow busted their way into the conversation like the Kool-Aid man. It has been a terrible look for the organization.

The question is now, whether Bryan's daddy, Jerry, will stay in his role as "special advisor" aka getting paid to do nothing. 

Phillyvoice's Kyle Neubeck reported this morning that Jerry Colangelo tried to defend Bryan and his job status, threatening to compromise club relationships around the league.

This doesn't come as a surprise considering how Jerry was snaked into Organization with the help of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver (allegedly). That coupled with the statement from Bryan Colangelo today, which was basically him just denying everything while simultaneously throwing his wife under the bus, shows that the Colangelos don't give a damn about the Sixers or it's fans as much as they care about saving their own reputation.  

I was never a fan of Colangelo, in fact, if you listen to any of the Hashtag Sixers podcasts that I do for this website, I was REALLY not a fan, but I was interested in seeing how this off-season would play out with him at the helm, considering it was the biggest off-season in the franchise's history. This, however, was the straw that broke the camel's back and considering that people have a hard time bringing up any Colangelo-made moves that actually benefited this team going into the future, and the fact that he made a bunch of moves that range from a net-negative to neutral, I'm not losing sleep over this. 

Good riddance.