The Pre-Process Sixers: What could have been?
With all the hype surrounding the future of this current Philadelphia 76ers squad, could the pre-Process team had made some noise?
Let’s all hop in the Delorean and go way back to May of 2012. Seems like it was decades ago. We were all losing our minds over the prospect that the world was gonna end, Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” was dominating the charts, and the NBA Playoffs were finally underway in the wake of a lockout-shortened regular season.
In the middle of all this madness, something special was going on in South Philly. The Philadelphia 76ers, led by Andre Iguodala, who had just made is first All-Star team in his eighth season, second-year forward Evan Turner, third-year guard Jrue Holiday, and second-year coach Doug Collins, were making their second-straight appearance in the NBA Playoffs. This was a squad that also included the likes of Lou Williams, Thaddeus Young, Spencer Hawes, and Elton Brand.
Entering the playoffs as an eight-seed, they were going up against a one-seeded Chicago Bulls team led by a pre-injury-prone Derrick Rose, who was just a year removed from being named the youngest MVP in NBA history. Unfortunately for Rose, he would tear his ACL late in Game 1, pretty much hammering the nail in the coffin for the Bulls that year.
Philadelphia 76ers
The Sixers would cap off the upset in a thrilling Game 6 win at the then-Wachovia Center thanks to a pair of Andre Iguodala free throws, moving on to face the Boston Celtics in the next round. They gave the Celtics everything they had in the seven-game series, but would ultimately drop the series to end the season a win shy of the Eastern Conference Finals.
I was in middle school when this all went down. Once AI left town, Andre Iguodala had quickly became my favorite player and I became attached to this team in particular. They didn’t play a particularly exciting brand of basketball like today’s team, but they were a lovable bunch of young guys who just made you feel good when they won. Yet, with the way that team performed in the Celtics series, you had the sense that maybe they were on the brink of doing something special in the near-future.
But I guess some things are better off left unrealized.
Three months after the season ended, Iguodala was traded to the Denver Nuggets in the infamous Andrew Bynum deal that saw the former Lakers center spend more time at bowling alleys than on the hardwood.
The Sixers would go 34-48 that season and miss the playoffs, leading to the resignation of Doug Collins at season’s end. Sam Hinkie would be hired as GM that same offseason, and the remaining core of Holiday, Turner, and Hawes would be traded over the course of the next few months as the Process Era officially began.
Six years later, Jrue Holiday clearly still thinks about what might’ve been:
"“…When I’m with Evan (Turner), or talking to Andre (Iguodala) it always comes up…we could’ve done some damage” — Hard in the Paint with Radio Rahul"
In retrospect, I think I speak for the majority when I say that the pre-Process squad as it was never was going to be a legitimate contender in the East. The East at that time was a stacked conference.
Not only did you have, in my opinion, peak LeBron James down in Miami with their Big Three, but you also had teams like the Carmelo Anthony-led New York Knicks, the Bulls who were still dangerous without Derrick Rose, and the Indiana Pacers, who featured a young Paul George along with Roy Hibbert, George Hill, and Danny Granger.
Comapred to them, that Sixers team was, in reality, just an average group. They were solid defensively and could definitely hold their own on the offensive end. The glaring problem, to me, was the lack of a bona-fide superstar/go-to guy.
They didn’t have a Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, or even a Dario Saric. Now obviously Ben and Joel are once-in-a-generation talents who we have never seen the likes of in the league and maybe never will again. The point is there was no one on the pre-Process roster who you could really watch and say, “that’s the guy who’s taking them to the next level”.
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These realities more than solidified the Sixers’ (Sam Hinkie’s) decision to enter the Process and why people like me trusted it. There were two options: stay put with what you have at the moment, sit idle as a 5-8 seed for multiple seasons, never have a real chance to compete for a title, and attempt to find some satisfaction in that. Or you tear everything down to essentially start from scratch, sacrifice a few seasons to stockpile draft picks and other assets to (hopefully) acquire premier talent, and have increased championship odds as a result.
It’s not a hard choice if you ask me.
Look, this is no disrespect to the guys that were on that team at all. I have nothing against them, and they’ve all found some form of success in the years since the break-up. Iguodala was the NBA Finals MVP in 2015, Jrue Holiday has led the Pelicans to a 2-0 series lead over Portland in the playoffs, Lou Williams is the likely Sixth Man of the Year, and Evan Turner has found solid playing time on a couple of playoff teams over the past few years.
Next: 5 things Sixers must improve for Game 3
But if I had the choice of the pre-Process squad or the group of guys we have right now, it’s not even close. I’m taking the latter all day, every day. The Sixers are clearly in a much better place than they were before.