Thad Young believes the 76ers should have kept 2011-12 team together(Audio)

In the 2011-12 NBA season, the Philadelphia 76ers made an improbable run through the playoffs. First, as the 8th seed in the playoffs, they were able to upset the number one seeded Chicago Bulls in round one. It did help that Derrick Rose went down with a torn ACL in Game 1. Next, they took the mighty Boston Celtics to 7 games before losing in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

There was a lot of hope with this team led by Andre Iguodala, Jrue Holiday, Thad Young, Lou Williams, and veteran leadership from Elton Brand. However, the team was broken up that summer after Iguodala was sent packing in the Andrew Bynum trade, which went horribly wrong because of Bynum’s injuries.

If that 2011-12 team would have stayed together, Thad Young believes that team could have made some noise in the Eastern Conference:

“All the guys are doing very well in other places now,” Young recently told the Go4it podcast. “You have Andre Iguodala who is doing extremely well with Golden State; you have a Jrue Holiday who is doing well with the Pelicans, and you have me playing with Indiana. We’ve done well as a team, and I’ve done well as an individual player. You have Evan(Turner) he’s out there with Portland, and he’s doing very well. You have key pieces to that team who have done very, very well around the league.

“Who’s to say if we were still together we wouldn’t be in a situation right now where we are playing for an Eastern Conference championship or anything like that. I think we could of, but at the end of the day, they made certain moves and certain decisions. They figured that they wanted to try to make this team younger and better in years to come as opposed to building what we had right then and there.”

The team had some talent that season, but they did benefit from Rose’s injury in round one of the playoffs. While they had solid players on that team, the Sixers needed a star, thus the reason for the Bynum trade.

Could that team led by Iguodala have been one of the top teams in Eastern Conference moving forward? I would say no. Iguodala was their best player, but he found the perfect role in Golden State. Jrue Holiday played well last season, but he has struggled with injuries in previous seasons. Thad Young has played well and is a solid player. Lou Williams, who led 2011-12 76ers in scoring, was terrific last season, and Evan Turner played well in Boston, but had some struggles in Portland. Even a guy who did not play much that season, Nic Vucevic, has played well with the Orlando Magic.

Maybe they all could have improved together as a team, but management did the right thing in trying to find a franchise player. In the end, Bynum did not pan out, then they tanked, and now they have two franchise-caliber players in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons.

I guess everything happens for a reason.

Young talks about the 2011-12 76ers at 18:15: