It’s funny, I like March Madness basketball, which has just anointed two competitors for the national championship. I love baseball, whose’s Opening Day is literally on this day that I’m writing this. But I think the NBA is more or less garbage, and here I am writing about it, because apparently, I can’t not talk about train wrecks.
Originally, I looked at the standings, because in spite of all the times I’ve said the Warriors will never catch the greatest team of all time, the 1996 Chicago Bulls, they’re currently sitting at 68-8, with six games to go. Sure, they’ve got a tough remaining six left, as five of them are against playoff-bound teams, and two of them are against the Spurs, whom if not for the Warriors themselves, would be recognized as having a truly fantastic season in their own right. But seeing as how the Warriors have lost pretty much one out of every eight games to this point, the idea of them going 3-3 in their final six to fall short of the 96 Bulls seems like its own impossibility.
I’d like to believe that the Spurs would love to be the team to deny the Warriors from breaking the record, or even hitting the 70 win plateau, but Gregg Popovich is also a big-picture guy who could just as easily not give two shits about stopping the Warriors if it meant resting his regulars so that they’re better prepared to face the Warriors in the playoffs, where it matters.
So at least in regards to the Warriors’ quest to beat or catch the 96 Bulls, or even hit the 70-win plateau, it seems like a foregone conclusion that I will have to eat my words, that they couldn’t do it. Stephen Curry is a freak of nature that continues to defy my smarmy sports beliefs, and as far as what the NBA needs, he’s exactly what it is, to draw fans’ attentions.
However, while dissecting the Warriors’ chances of immortality, I noticed in the standings that the Lakers were really bad, having not won even 20 games. There’s plenty of hullabaloo about how this is Kobe Bryant’s last season, and it’s kind of mind-blowing to think that I’ve witnessed the careers of two of the most legendary scorers in history, but there’s something kind of wrong with the notion that a guy like Kobe is being sent off in a carriage of shit that is the 16 Lakers. Then again, MJ ended his career on the fucking Wizards, so I guess it’s inevitable that great players go out on the bottom, unless you’re David Robinson.
After seeing the record of the Lakers, I wondered if there was anybody worse. I didn’t have to look very far, because the Philadelphia 76ers, well, simply put, exist.
The Lakers had a paltry 18 wins. The 76ers had 9. NINE WINS. Out of 77 games played.
Where the Warriors have lost one in every 8 games-ish, the 76ers have won one in every 8 games-ish. The 76ers went all of November, defeated, as in they didn’t win a single game in the entire calendar month. In both February and March, they won but single games. At no point during the season did the 76ers win two consecutive games.
There’s nothing really more that needs to be said about how the 76ers are the worst team in the NBA this season, but the question that came to mind amidst this information was is there a worse team historically than the Philadelphia 76ers?
I mean, at this point, the 76ers have taken tanking not just as a strategy, but as apparently a way of life. It’s just not a viable strategy anymore, with how players roam and jump around when they’re unhappy, not just to other NBA teams, but to overseas, where they can potentially make more money, and/or potentially become gods.
So what if the 76ers get another #1 draft pick as a result of their shitty 2016 season? Who’s to say that existing players, tired of sub-20 win seasons decide to opt-out of their contracts, act in manners in which their existing deals are voided, or some other horse shit that gets them kicked off the 76ers, and then they go to a stronger team, or go overseas?
The bottom line is that the 76ers, at least in my mind, are the worst team in the history of the NBA. I’m 33 years old, and the history books tell me that in 1983, when I was a year old, the 76ers won the NBA championship, but after that, from when I got to an age where I was cognitive and potentially understood records, the 76ers have pretty much lived in the basement of the NBA, save for a brief period of time in which Allen Iverson resurrected the franchise for an appearance in the NBA Finals. But aside from that, they’ve pretty much been in the bottom of the standings, and any playoff appearances at all, were almost all entirely first-round exits.
However, back when I was a big NBA fanatic, the worst records in the league would typically be around 20-22 wins. I remember my jaw dropping the first time I saw that a team (probably the 76ers), finished with 19 wins. And it’s apparent that parity continued to dissolve over the years as more teams would finish with 50+ wins, several teams would enter the playoffs with under .500 records, and it would become commonplace for there to be at least one team with a sub-20 win record. Usually the 76ers.
The point is, the 76ers are always bad, and one has to wonder if they even are worthy to remain in the NBA. At this point, I’m pretty sure guys in the D-League could compete with the 76ers and probably win their share in a series of games. Every so often, there’s always the question of “best college team versus worst pro team,” where the pundits always side with the pros, but in the case of the 76ers, you really have to ask yourself if that’s the case. Honestly, the 76ers are so bad, it begins to beg the question of “really really good high school varsity team versus the 76ers” would the 76ers struggle?
I mean, I don’t hide the fact that I’m not a fan of Philadelphia sports in any capacity, but the 76ers really are so bad, it garners a little bit of sympathy for the cretin Philly sports fans who have to put up with such a below sub-standard product for such lifetimes. It’s got to really suck to know that going to a 76ers game is almost a guaranteed loss, and if the city weren’t such a miserable place to visit, I’d say it’s got to be the Mecca for sports fans of opponents to come visit and have a high chance of seeing a road victory.
