Is there any team that had a worse season than the Wizards?

remember when we were floating the Brendan Haywood for JR Smith rumors back in January? People seemed to be overwhelmingly against it. That we should hold out for Nicolas Batum and Rudy Fernandez.

Obviously we expected to get more out of the Butler/Haywood trade, but damn, did you see JR Smith last night? I mean I realize he is a headcase and he and Blatche on the same team could be disastrous, but damn, when JR Smith has it going, there may not be a more talented 2-guard in the game.

The Wizards blew up an ultimately unsuccessful team, albeit in an ugly way. The Pistons sealed their fate — barring some serious luck in the draft — as below average for at least 2-3 more years. At least the Wiz and Nets have hope now, those other three are trapped for years to come.

Because both teams had high expectations. The only reason the 6ers had a worse season is because they crashed and burned so quickly. At least we had a month or so of hope. Elton Brand was supposed to make that team a contender (or at least according to Wilbon, lol).

But to go from a projected 4 seed to blowing up the whole team and sending away your best players to thrive on playoff teams, with the specter of screwing up another high draft pick looming, and that stupid gun crap ruining everything … we win.

After reading your post, you could make a compelling argument for any of these teams. I’d say the Warriors are us last year with all the injuries, but hey, they drafted Steph Curry! We don’t have any young stars to get excited about. I would go to a Warriors just to see Curry play this season. The Wiz can’t say that. Same with the Nets, they have young stars you can root for. Rooting for Dray was pretty painful for me. He acts like such a knucklehead.

Comparing the Wiz and 6ers is tough because they each had the highest expectations of this groups.

P.S. The only reason the Clippers aren’t on this list is because we are so accustomed to them being so bad. Their fancy pick can’t get on the floor. That would be tough to swallow as a Wizards fan. Ours can’t either, but Foye and Miller did, and boy was that exciting. Sigh.

They had more realistic championship expectations than us until their starting center, backup center, best defender (Batum), and backup 2 (Rudy) all went down. Then, once things start looking up again with the Camby trade and Andre Miller finally playing well, the rug gets pulled up from under them once again with an injury to their star player in the last game of the regular season. Talk about a terrible season. At least by the midway point we realized things weren’t going to work out. It’s also worth mentioning that their front office is in a little bit of chaos with the Tom Penn firing.

But I think “worst” season has to go to NJ.

Imagine being as die hard a fan of that team as you are of the Wizards. Just painful all season long. At least we had drama and a few spurts of good exciting play. They were in the wilderness all season.

The Wizards had one of the worst seasons in sports history, yet alone in the NBA this season. It’s not just on court disappointment (which was definitely the case in Washington), the loooooong time owner dying, Franchise player convicted of a felony, captain traded to a team most of your fans loathe, franchise record 16 game losing streak, suiting up what 25 different players, (most casual fans can probably only name 1 or 2 players on the current team)…….EARL BOYKINS (I just had to throw that one in there)

But it wasn’t too long that New Jersey and Philadelphia were the NBA Finals. Pistons won the Finals in 2004 and were almost regulars in the Eastern Conference Finals. The T’Wolves made in to the Western Conference Finals before trading KG away.

Golden State and the Wizards are the only two teams out of this group who haven’t even sniffed a conference final (let alone an NBA Final) in the past ten years. The rest of these “bad teams” have tasted real success but fell off for a variety of different reasons.

And I’m not even going to go into their drafting and free agency fortune during that period.

So forgive me for not shedding a tear for these guys. They pretty much had their time in the spotlight and we’re still trying to get in the damn building.

And I’m not joking. Believe it or not, it was a blessing in disguise for things to go so terribly wrong that Ernie was forced to blow this thing up. The worst thing that could have happened this season would have been for Arenas to have played a little bit better, Caron’s drop-off to have not been so severe, and for the gun incident to have never happened. We would have probably squeaked into the post-season as the 8th seed, gotten demolished by Cleveland in the 1st round (again!), and then we would have been saddled with Jamison’s and Butler’s contracts next season, a mid-1st round pick that we would have probably traded, and no cap room.

As things turned out, we have a legitimate shot at a top 3 pick, max cap space for one of the biggest free agent markets to come along in a long time, an emerging Andray Blatche, an even healthier Gilbert Arenas with a chip on his shoulder, and other young players that have a lot more experience going into next season. Things turned the corner for us after the trade deadline, whether we realized it or not.

If Ted Leonsis buys the team before the draft, cans Ernie Grunfeld and the Wiz get a top 3 choice in the draft.

If I was to rank the dissapointing teams based on good expectations it would be:
1. 76ers
2. Pistons
3. Wizards
If I was going by worst outcome (considering it will take the teams at the top of my list longer to bounce back) it would be:
1. Wizards
2. Nets
3. T-Wolves
4. Warriors
5. 76ers
6. Pistons