As Sixers GM, Pat Williams worked with three owners

There is always adjustment to new owners, and that will certainly be the case if New York billionaire Joshua Harris and his group completes the deal to buy the 76ers.

If that happens, Sixers president Rod Thorn and his staff will be in for an adjustment period. But it's unlikely that they will have to go through what Pat Williams did when facing his first ownership change.

Williams, the senior vice president of the Orlando Magic, was Sixers general manager from 1974 through 1986, a span that included three owners - Irv Kosloff, Fitz Dixon, and Harold Katz.

Yet it was Williams' first experience of ownership change that truly opened his eyes. It came after his third season as general manager of the Chicago Bulls, when, in the summer of 1972, the team was sold to a group led by Arthur Wirtz.

The ownership group included two limited partners who made their names in other sports - George Steinbrenner and Lamar Hunt.

Hunt owned the Kansas City Chiefs and was one of the principal players in the NFL-AFL merger. Williams said he was a delight to work with.

Steinbrenner was a different story.

He was the principal owner of the New York Yankees for 37 years until his death last July. Yet, when the Bulls were sold in 1972, Steinbrenner was a shipping magnate from Cleveland and a wannabe sports owner. Despite the fact that Steinbrenner was a limited partner, Williams heard from him frequently.

"I never met Steinbrenner, but I began hearing from him regularly, and he would call me from Cleveland wanting to know about this or that and questioning signings," Williams said in a phone interview. "Then, one day in November, I picked up the paper and read that a Cleveland shipping magnate had headed a group and bought the [New York] Yankees from CBS, and the calls from Cleveland stopped immediately."

The official sale of the Yankees came on Jan. 3, 1973.

Williams learned one thing with his brief dealings with Steinbrenner.

"That prepared me for anything," he said.

As a postscript, Williams said he had a good relationship over the years with Steinbrenner, who even hired Williams' son, Thomas, as an intern in the Yankees accounting department.

Few people have had more interesting interactions with owners than Williams.

Probably the most amusing came a few months after Dixon bought the Sixers in May of 1976.

Williams went to Dixon and said the team had a chance to acquire Julius Erving from the New York Nets.

This was the year of the NBA-ABA merger, and the Nets needed some cash. To acquire Erving, it would take $6 million - $3 million to give the Nets and $3 million to sign Erving to a five-year deal, a hefty total at the time.

But, when Williams went to Dixon and told him the team had a chance to acquire Erving, the new owner asked, "Who is Julius Erving?"

So Williams explained that Erving was the "Babe Ruth of basketball," and Dixon gave him the approval to get the deal done.

Williams also has been an owner.

"When I left Philadelphia 25 years ago I learned something. It sure helps to be part of the ownership group," Williams said.

Williams was on the ground floor of getting a franchise in Orlando, and he began work there after leaving the Sixers in 1986. The Orlando franchise played its first season in 1989-90.

"When we put this new group together I was included in the ownership," Williams said.

The original Magic owners operated the team for just two seasons before selling to the DeVos family in September of 1992. The family still owns the team.

During the sale, the new owners bought out the limited partners, such as Williams, in a deal that had a lasting impact on his family.

"I had a small percentage, roughly 2.5 percent, but it paid my kids' way through college," Williams said.