July 07, 2016
Rusty Kennedy/AP
Philadelphia 76ers' owner Pat Croce celebrates after his team beat the Milwaukee Bucks 108-91 in game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals Sunday, June 3, 2001 in Philadelphia.
In an alternate historical universe, former Sixers owner Pat Croce would be a new age yogi pirate.
Seriously, if you haven't paid any attention to Croce since he left the team in 2001, he's captained a mini-empire of pirate-themed restaurants down in Key West and opened a Pirate & Treasure Museum in St. Augustine. He regularly goes on dives for treasure and artifacts and has voyaged to the northern coast of Panama to find the remains of Sir Francis Drake (no dice, but he did find a couple of boats).
Pat Croce, the former president of the Philedelphia 76ers basketball team, poses at the entrance to his Pirate's Soul museum in downtown Key West, Fla., in this March 2006 photo. He opened his collection of pirate memorabilia to the public last year, with a $10 million museum.
As it turns out, the exuberant Croce had much loftier designs, according to a feature published this week by Sports Illustrated:
Had his team won a second game against Shaq, Kobe and the Lakers to force Game 6 in Los Angeles, Croce says he would have rappelled from a helicopter to drape a 76ers banner over the H in the HOLLYWOOD sign. He’d already reserved the chopper.
“There was no permission!” he says. “They could have arrested me. Philly would have loved that.”
The Sixers lost game two by a score of 98-89, the first of four consecutive L's that extinguished the team's scintillating playoff run past the Pacers, Raptors and Bucks.
We never got to see Croce pull off the coolest daredevil taunt in the history of pro sports. If this caper had been witnessed while it was happening and plastered all over CNN before anyone knew it was Croce, the discussion would have been about a crazed stuntman of unknown persuasion. Croce's grin would have been immortalized and later made into an all-purpose meme.
It's hard to believe that Croce wouldn't trade many of his life's accomplishments to have won the NBA Finals, but on the other hand, if he had, there would today be hordes of Floridians living their lives in shameful ignorance of pirates and maritime history. Croce might never have plunged deeper into his transcendentalist passion, penning books about mindful leadership and donating $250,000 to West Chester University's Center for Contemplative Studies.
We'll just have to pin our collective hopes on building around Ben Simmons.
