Ranking the Worst NBA Teams of the Last Decade

The worst teams in the NBA have similarities in performance, but the context of many ghastly campaigns are often different.

Dating back to the 2012-13 NBA season, we've watched the tanking Philadelphia 76ers be built to lose. Other disastrous squads had poorly constructed rosters, and still more unsuccessfully leaned on aging stars.

The list is largely focused on the teams with the worst year-end records. However, full-season statistics—both common stats and advanced metrics—are also used to determine the order.

But, hey, good news, Charlotte Bobcats fans! You won't relive the nightmarish 2011-12 team beyond this mention.

The entire NBA world expected the 2018-19 New York Knicks to struggle. After all, they'd be without Kristaps Porziņģis while he recovered from a knee injury and ended up trading him in January 2019 anyway.

Still, it was a dreadful season.

With the slate ingloriously headlined by an 18-game skid, the Knicks tied a franchise record with 65 losses. (More on that shortly.) They registered NBA-low marks in overall field-goal percentage—including the worst two-point and third-lowest three-point clips—and offensive rating.

New York managed to not be completely awful on defense, though the unit ended at No. 20 or below in opponent turnover rate, rebounding rate and effective field-goal rate allowed.

Fast-forward a half-decade past 2013-14, and the Milwaukee Bucks had found a franchise-altering superstar. But this is very much a "started from the bottom, now we're here" story.

Milwaukee chose Giannis Antetokounmpo with the 15th pick in the 2013 draft. He was not an immediate success, holding a part-time starting role while averaging 6.8 points per game as a rookie.

The Bucks recorded an NBA-low 111.8 defensive rating. They tallied the league's third-fewest steals, second-worst defensive rebound rate and worst opponent three-point mark.

Meanwhile, the offense ranked 26th in effective field-goal percentage with the third-fewest points per game. The team had three losing streaks of eight games or more on the way to finishing 15-67.

But the bright side is this horrible year preceded Antetokounmpo's star ascent and Milwaukee's title in 2021.

Important context is the Minnesota Timberwolves willingly entered this situation. In the offseason, they traded All-Star forward Kevin Love in a three-way deal to acquire No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins.

The long-term vision—flawed, though it was—led to a challenging short-term outlook.

Wiggins won Rookie of the Year, but Minnesota rolled out an otherwise low-performing team. As if shooting two-pointers inefficiently wasn't bad enough, the offensive group lacked long-range firepower. It's honestly impressive that a 66-loss team attempted the fewest three-pointers in the league, considering the number of late-game deficits faced.

Minnesota also ceded a league-worst defensive rebounding rate and effective field-goal percentage with an NBA-low defensive rating

Although the beginning of the Philadelphia 76ers' tanking era didn't include their worst overall record of the abysmal three-year stretch, the franchise set a record for futility in 2013-14.

Look, at 14-31, a team's immediate fate is obvious. There will be no postseason trip.

But the Sixers proceeded to lose 26 consecutive games, which remains tied for the longest single-season skid in NBA history. Only the 2010-11 Cleveland Cavaliers have dropped as many games in a row.

While producing a 19-63 record, they shot a league-worst 31.2 percent from three. They committed the most turnovers per game. Opponents shot an NBA-high 51.1 percent inside the arc and collected more assists and blocked more shots than anyone in the league.

At least the Sixers snagged the most steals in the NBA? So that's, uh, something, I guess.

The final season of Kobe Bryant's legendary career ended in amazing fashion. He scored 60 points, including 15 of his team's last 17 points—with a go-ahead jumper—to erase a double-digit fourth-quarter deficit and beat the Utah Jazz.

Beloved as that game remains, the Los Angeles Lakers had stumbled through the 2015-16 campaign.

Los Angeles posted NBA-worst rankings in two- and three-point percentage, assists, points per game, assists allowed and defensive rating. Plus, the Lakers tallied the second-lowest offensive rating. They were, quite simply, a bad all-around team during Kobe's farewell tour.

One season after setting a franchise record with 61 losses, the Lakers broke the mark again by dropping 65 games.

The most damning part of this particular Knicks season is the near-unfathomable lack of continuity.

Only six players appeared in 50-plus games, a reflection of the injuries to Carmelo Anthony, José Calderón and others. Overall, the Knicks—who entered the season with a betting win total (over/under) of 40—used 20 players. Every one averaged at least 13.2 minutes, so they basically had a different rotation for the entire year.

Unsurprisingly, the constant shuffling was not a positive.

New York trudged to a franchise-worst 17-65 mark with the fewest points per game in the league. In addition to registering the NBA's second-lowest offensive and third-worst defensive rating, the Knicks endured a pair of 10-game losing streaks for the first time in their history.

If you lined up the 2014-15 squad against the 2018-19 team, maybe the result actually favors this squad. But at least the latter team played a semblance of defense.

In hindsight, we know "The Process" didn't really work. Specific to this historically bad season, it didn't help that Philadelphia played a second whole campaign with 2014 first-rounder Joel Embiid sidelined.

One sentence alone, however, says everything you need to know about the construction of this tanking roster.

The Sixers started 0-18, finally pulled out a win and proceeded to lose 12 consecutive games.

A real, professional NBA team held a 1-30 record.

Worse yet, Philly compiled two more losing streaks of at least 12 games—four on the season, if you're keeping track—and never earned consecutive wins. Ever. At any point. Mercifully, the Sixers' year ended at 10-72, the third-worst winning percentage (.122) in NBA history.

Embiid has since become a superstar. But without much postseason success—unlike the Bucks, for example—the memory of this atrocious season is merely a reminder of a failed long-term experiment.

Stats via Basketball Reference.