So, the other day I got thinking, really digging into this idea: who actually is the worst NBA player ever? It sounds simple, right? But man, the more I chewed on it, the messier it got.
It started pretty casually. Maybe I saw a guy brick a wide-open shot during a game, or maybe it was just some random late-night thought. But I decided, okay, let’s try and figure this out, like actually put some effort into it.
My Little Project: Finding Mr. Bottom-of-the-Barrel
First thing I did was think, “Okay, stats.” That’s the easy way, right? So I started trying to remember, or look up, guys with just awful numbers.
- Lowest points per game for someone who played, like, actual minutes?
- Worst shooting percentages ever? Field goal, free throws… the whole deal.
- Maybe the guys who turned the ball over constantly?
- Or those advanced stats? Player Efficiency Rating (PER)? Who’s scraping the bottom there?
But you know what? Stats only tell part of the story. A guy might have terrible stats because he only played garbage time minutes his whole short career. Is he really worse than a guy who played 30 minutes a night for years and was just consistently bad, a starter who actively hurt his team?
So, I shifted gears. I started thinking about draft busts. Guys picked super high who just did nothing. You expect a lot, you get squat. Does that make them the worst? The expectation versus reality is massive. Names started popping into my head, guys who were lottery picks and barely lasted, or just looked lost on the court. Think about guys like Adam Morrison, Kwame Brown sometimes gets thrown around, or maybe Darko Milicic, even though he hung around for a while.
Then my brain went somewhere else. What about the “eye test”? Forget the numbers for a second. Who just looked like they didn’t belong? Like they won a contest to be on the court? Some players, you watch them, and they just seem clumsy, out of sync, making baffling decisions. It’s hard to measure, but you know it when you see it. I tried recalling players who just made me groan every time they touched the ball.
I even considered guys known for one specific terrible thing. Like, maybe someone was an absolutely atrocious defender, just a walking layup line. Or someone who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn but kept shooting anyway. Does being historically bad at one key thing make you the overall worst?
It’s Just… Really Hard To Say
The more I went down this rabbit hole, the more I realized it’s kind of impossible. How do you compare a terrible player from the 70s to a terrible player now? The game’s totally different. Roles are different. What was valued then isn’t always valued now.
And honestly? Just making it to the NBA puts you in like the top 0.0001% of basketball players on Earth. So calling someone the “worst” feels a bit harsh. They’re still unbelievably talented compared to us regular folks.
So, after all that thinking and digging around in my memory and some old stats pages, I didn’t really land on one single name. There are candidates, sure. Lots of ’em, depending on how you define “worst”. Guys who couldn’t score, guys who couldn’t defend, guys who didn’t live up to the hype, guys who just looked awkward.
My final takeaway from this whole exercise? It’s a fun debate to have with friends over a beer, maybe. But finding a definitive “worst”? Nah. Too many variables, too subjective. It’s a messy question with no clean answer, and maybe that’s the point. Trying to figure it out was the interesting part anyway.
