The Detroit Detroit pistons worst record had their worst record in a season this season, with a record of DETROIT – The Pistons don't have the worst record in the NBA anymore. Let that sink in. It's honestly impressive that another NBA team could. The Detroit Pistons have finished the 1st half of the season with a record. But that is only the 6th worst record ever for the 1st half. bravadoaustralia.com.au › Basketball.
What was the Pistons best year? 2005–06
Like our honorable mention, this franchise has no connection to the modern franchise with the same name. These Denver Nuggets were a regional team that got promoted to the NBA in , but they were so bad they only lasted one season, returning to the minors for two more years before folding completely in One strange thing about the Nuggets is that all of their wins came in three spurts.
After starting the season on a game losing streak, they won three of four. Then they had an game losing streak, before winning three of five. Then they had a game losing streak before winning five of six. And then they ended the season on an game losing streak, giving them four double-digit losing streaks in a single season, a record that has been tied by several teams on this list but never surpassed.
The Rockets had made the playoffs four straight years with Moses Malone, but after trading him they came into the season with minimal expectations and met them, starting on a ten-game losing streak. Allen Leavell led the team in scoring and assists with the relatively paltry As a team, they hit just 67 three-pointers the entire season though they attempted the second most in the league, in an era when teams considered the three to be a novelty act.
Fortunately, after the season they drafted Ralph Sampson, who was then joined by Akeem Olajuwon the following year, as the Rockets quickly rebounded. Olajuwon surely helped them. Look at his first game:. They had the worst offense and the worst defense in the league. They started , won once, then lost 12 more, won again, then lost seven more.
The Sixers kept losing, reaching a record of But then they lost 25 of 26, leaving them stuck at nine wins with just a week to go in the regular season. A victory on April 5th over the New Orleans Pelicans gave the Sixers their tenth win, allowing them to avoid tying any records. But at least they had won 30 games for three straight years.
Unlike many of the teams on this list, they started the season decently enough, going But then they went on losing streaks of 12 and They also ended the season on a game losing streak, to reach 70 losses, becoming just the second team to do so. The Nuggets entered the season with minimal expectations, having gotten worse four consecutive years, and with a preseason total of They started the season and it would get worse from there, as they later embarked on a game losing streak, which was at the time the longest single-season losing streak in NBA history.
They followed that with a game losing streak, which put them at with just 19 games to go, and the worst record in NBA history looked like a lock. Sixth man Johnny Newman led the team in scoring at Kenny Sailors led the team in scoring with Yes, it was a different era, but these numbers were still bad. At the end of the next season, owner Lou Pieri asked Red Auerbach, then the young coach of the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, what the Steamrollers needed to do to start winning.
Auerbach told him to spend money on better players and a new arena. Detroit pistons worst record Pieri instead decided to fold the franchise. The next season when Celtics owner Walter Brown asked Pieri to invest in the Celtics, who were also facing a financial crisis. Pieri offered to do so only if the Celtics hired Auerbach as coach and agreed to play some games in Providence. The Sixers lost more games in one season than any team ever.
They were also the first team to lose 20 straight games. In an age when teams fire 40 3s a night, it seems impossible that variance alone wouldn't prevent long losing streaks. But not in Detroit, where the past four lottery picks are shooting a combined Of the players who have taken at least 50 3s this season, Cunningham, Hayes, Ivey and Thompson rank th, th, th and rd, respectively.
You get the point. No franchise loses games over a four-year span and does not want to win. So, again, are the Pistons the worst team ever to try. We will determine this through a Venn Diagram of Awfulness, using three subsets of the league's biggest losers:. The league's longest losing streaks because there is atrocious, and then there is so atrocious that even the threat of embarrassment on a historical level cannot prevent you from being atrocious over and over.
Each franchise's worst season because it's difficult to be the NBA's worst if you're not your city's worst. Hey, look, there are this season's Spurs and Wizards. You're not alone, Pistons. A couple of wins against the Nets, and you might not even be the worst team this season, let alone the worst team ever in the NBA. Even Isiah Thomas resigned as lead executive of this team midseason.
The best player, Damon Stoudamire, publicly called out interim general manager Glen Grunwald, so the Raptors traded him, and then the coach resigned as a result. Kenny Anderson refused to report to Toronto in return for Stoudamire, and their second-leading scorer, Doug Christie, requested a trade. Kendall Gill threatened to retire if he was traded to the Raptors. This roster had four head coaches in the same season.
The season prior, the Cavaliers traded all of their first-round draft picks from to , including the one for the campaign in question here, which became James Worthy, so the NBA had to create the Ted Stepien Rule, named for Cleveland's new owner, preventing teams from trading first-round picks in consecutive seasons — a rule that still restricts deals today.
This was the third year of the franchise's existence. Their first pick in the expansion draft was Rick Mahorn, and the first two first-round picks in team history were Pooh Richardson and Felton Spencer. The Bulls actually collapsed when Michael Jordan left in , since most everyone joined him on the way out of Chicago. This team's coach, Tim Floyd, the worst coach ever to hold a job for four straight seasons, actually told reporters after this season, "Every day has been hell.
It has not been fun. David Kahn's tenure as GM was something to behold. Two years removed from Kevin Garnett's exit, the Timberwolves drafted point guards back-to-back with the Nos. I wanted to pick first because we would have had more options. I still feel that we'll get a good player. But I wish we could have picked higher. These Nets severed their ties with their glory days of the early s, dealing Jason Kidd at the trade deadline and jettisoning Vince Carter in the summer of It is unclear how much they actually wanted to lose, though Charles Barkley said , "I think they tanked it last season.
That team has some good players, but they tanked it to get the No. He was dealt a pair of 2s. They lost two more games to start , then fired the interim coach, and Kiki Vandeweghe installed himself to coach the final 64 games of the season and wrangled a finish. Detroit is on pace to win six games. There is a lot of evidence this team was the worst in NBA history, but they won their final two games of the season to outperform statistical expectations.
There is also no way they were trying to win. They traded leading scorer Rolando Blackman and most everyone else from an already bad team to field 13 first- or second-year players. They tanked for Chris Webber in the draft and landed Jamal Mashburn instead.