Pride Is Hard To Swallow
In the end, the 2011-2012 season had ended early for Andrew Bynum. That injury would prove to be more than the Philadelphia 76ers could comprehend. In essence, they bid on a dry well. Without Bynum, the Sixers scrambled badly to assemble a team. Moutrie played in 47 games and started none. Bynum never stepped foot onto the basketball court.
Daily Knicks
In the end, it was not Andrew Bynum’s decision to have surgery on both knees and forgo the entire 2012-2013 season which did the Philadelphia 76ers in. What truly collapsed the team was the repeated short-sightedness which became all too apparent over and over again to the fans of the team.
Each time the Philadelphia 76ers had gotten to the championship game, they had uncovered an almost miraculous arrival of a center whose talents were far superior than that of nearly any other center in the NBA. Moses Malone arrived to take the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers to the promised land. Dikembe Mutumbo arrived to take the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers to the doorway of the promised land.
The 2012 Philadelphia 76ers had aspirations of walking that short cut to the big dance one more time. It was not a stroke of bad luck, or poor player choice. It was the failure of the entire organization to know that they would need a star caliber center if they had any hopes of getting to a championship, but the entire extent of the plan was to hope that one would show up in the off-season out of thin air.
Pride is so hard to swallow.
Next: End of Chapter One?