Coukld the Philadelphia 76ers lose 76 games?

The worst team in NBA history were the 1972-1973 Philadelphia 76ers, who went 9-73. Watching them play the Raptors last night I believe this year’s edition could be worse.

Now, they were underdogs for sure. They’re a team no one thought would make the playoffs, on the road, playing a team everyone expects to win the division. But holy shit, they were terrible. It might have been the worst performance of professional basketball I’ve ever witnessed and when you’ve seen a lot of Raptors games that is a hell of a thing to say.

The Sixers do have some talented young players, but they’re all hurt, or playing in Israel or Turkey or something. Last night’s collection of clowns lost 120-88 and that score is extremely kind; Toronto rotated in all their players, gave the regulars lots of rest, and still held a 41-point lead in the fourth before they visibly stopped trying, I would assume out of a sense of decency and sportsmanship. The Sixers appeared to be good at nothing. They shot poorly, they hit only two thirds of their free throws, they committed lots of dumb fouls, and they do not play any identifiable defensive system. Holy shit they were bad. And they’re bad on purpose, because the organization is clearly tanking, to the extent that the NBA has tossed around the idea of changing the draft rules to prevent teams from tanking THIS much.

Could this team go 8-74? Hell, could they go 0-82? Discuss.

Hmm… no.

To lose that many games, they’d have to be both very bad (which they are) AND extremely unlucky.

They’ll play against enough other lousy teams that they should post at least 10 wins.

The Wizards started 0-11 in 2012-13 and still managed to win 29 games.

It’s too bad the Basketbawful blog isn’t still active. Lots of good bad stuff this season.

The 76ers have stiff competition for modern day futility. The 2010 Nets started 0-18 and finished 12-70. The 2011 Cavs had a 25 game losing streak. And hey, the Lakers are an absolute trainwreck! They’ve won one game and their defense is comically bad. If they keep it up it could be historically notable. It’s always more fun when a bad team think they’ll be good, try to be good, and just fall on their face, as opposed to tanking and trotting out half baked rookies. That’s what has made the Knicks so enjoyable over the years.

I don’t think it’s especially likely, but I do think it’s possible. The argument that there are other bad teams, everybody gets lucky, etc etc, applies only when both teams involved are NBA-caliber teams. The Sixers are not that. They are terrible, maybe historically terrible. I’ve been watching basketball for my whole life and have never seen anything like it. Their best player - their best player - is probably Tony Wroten, who would not start for any other NBA team that I can think of. I don’t even know who their second-best player is at this moment. Henry Sims? Alex Shved?

And the thing about this Sixers team that makes it different from any other team in history that has been in this situation is that this team is unabashedly hoping to lose, and making no effort to hide it. Yeah, the Spurs kinda tanked for Tim Duncan and the Celtics did, too… but not like this - not openly and entirely and without even a nod for being competitive.

They may trade Wroten. They may trade Michael Carter-Williams. For either man they will not receive NBA caliber talent in return, by design. They almost certainly will not play Joel Embiid at all.

They are bad. They are so bad it wraps around into good and then back into bad. Last night I was watching guys shoot uncontested jump shots that were not even hitting the rim - sometimes not even hitting the backboard. Greivis Vasquez and Jonas Valanciunas ran the same pick-and-roll play about 600 times and the Sixers didn’t stop it once. The Raptors could have won by 60 if they’d wanted to.

I don’t think they’ll have six wins at the All Star Break… and if they do, I think Sam Hinkie will trade or cut whoever is responsible. So yeah, 8 wins is a possibility.

So much for The Lottery discouraging tanking…