Can my old carrier unblock my phone even though it's not activated?

Today i called sprint and i told them to unblock my phone since the iPhone has already been paid and i have more than 50 days with them so they told me that they were gonna unblock it between 48-72 hours so i moved to cricket the same day i called sprint and cricket gave me a free phone while the iPhone 7 gets unblocked but my question is will they still unblock it even though i don't have my iPhone activated anymore and i moved to another carrier??