Which, miserable as it was, couldn't even crack their Top 3 in terms of consecutive losses that year. They had futile stretches of 20, 15 and 14 games, too. Even "Big Daddy" Don Garlits never left skidmarks that long. At least the Sixers were 9-11 in and around all those streaks.
No team in NBA annals ever has lost more than Philadelphia that season (73). No modern team ever has won fewer (nine). Those dual distinctions -- di-stink-tions? -- give the 1972-73 Sixers squad a special place in league lore that several surviving members are glad to have, even feel a little protective of. It beats, y'know, abject anonymity.
That's why Fred Carter, the leading scorer on that team (20 points a game) and a Philadelphia native, was calculating the odds Wednesday when I called him about the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets' chances of tying, or maybe taking the Sixers' record outright. Surveying the standings and the concussion that would again sideline Sacramento's Rookie of the Year favorite Tyreke Evans, Carter saw a glimmer of light in the Nets' 7-63 tunnel. Besides -- and he didn't even need to say it -- the Kings are mindful of their own spot in the NBA's reverse standings, knowing that extra victories near the end now could drop them from sixth-worst to seventh-, eighth- or beyond. That means fewer Ping Pong balls in the lottery, a mechanism Philadelphia's opponents didn't need to think about back in 1973.
Of the Nets, Carter said Wednesday: "Once they get No. 8, then No. 9 is just around the corner." And sure enough, a few hours later, New Jersey did get to No. 8, beating Sacramento 93-79 at the IZOD Center. Unlike the old Sixers -- who, let's face it, have learned to live with their notoriety -- the current Nets want no part of "losingest" anything. Minutes after notching their eighth victory since late October, New Jersey players were thinking about a ninth -- the one that would unburden them of at least 50 percent of their distinction.
"You have to look at the next one," center Brook Lopez said, "a winnable game against Detroit."
Would these Nets know a winnable game if they saw one? The Sixers of 37 years ago didn't; they bumped along that season not just as the team with the worst record but as the worst team, which aren't always the same things.
Philadelphia in 1972-73 ranked last in the NBA in defense, allowing 116.2 points per game. That left them last in point differential too -- minus 12.1, based on their 104.1 scoring average. Curiously, the Buffalo Braves got outscored by an average of 9.2 points that year yet managed to win 21 times.
The Sixers finished last in the Atlantic Division, a whopping 59 games behind the Boston Celtics (68-14) in the Atlantic Division. They were last in home attendance as well, drawing an average of 4,461, or a little more than half the league's average (8,474). They played 31 games at The Spectrum and went 5-26, while staging 10 of their home dates at Pittsburgh (1-5) and in Hershey, Pa. (0-4).
Overall, there was one swell fortnight in an otherwise dreary season: From Valentine's Day through the end of February, the Sixers got hot, even scalding by their standards, winning five games in a stretch of seven. After a five-game, eight-day road trip bounced them from Boston to Portland to Los Angeles and left them 4-58, the Sixers won at home by two points over Milwaukee, then backed it up 48 hours later with 119-106 victory over Detroit. They split back-to-back games with the Knicks, lost to Houston in Hershey, then defeated Portland and Baltimore. Their two two-game winning streaks were their longest of the season.
Carter gave credit for the bump in results to Kevin Loughery, the injured 32-year-old guard who took over as head coach after the All-Star break in late January. His predecessor, Roy Rubin, had been overmatched after jumping from Long Island University, something the players noticed right away when Rubin got oddly buoyant after a preseason victory over the Celtics. Loughery's 5-out-of-7 stretch was his only good run, but he still won more in 31 games as coach than Rubin (4-47) had in 51.
Before, during and after? Not so good. Philadelphia opened the season by dropping its first 15, which is tied for the fourth-worst start to any NBA season. By losing its final 13, it holds a share of the fifth-worst finish. And that 20-game skid from Jan. 9 through Feb. 11 still ranks second-worst in league history for most consecutive defeats in one season, behind only Vancouver's 23-gamer in 1995-96.
The Sixers' .110 winning percentage -- really, shouldn't they be known for their .890 losing percentage? -- is the worst ever, undercutting even the 1947-48 Providence Steamrollers, who went 6-42 (.125) in the old BAA. Remember, though, the Philadelphia franchise had won an NBA championship only six years earlier, posting a 68-13 mark in 1966-67. It won 62 games the next season, 55 in 1968-69 and 47 in 1970-71, just two seasons before the bottom dropped out. Top scorer Billy Cunningham had jumped to the ABA and coach Jack Ramsay, after winning 30 games in 1971-72, had shuffled off to Buffalo.
The Sixers were shuffling themselves by 1972-73, moving a total of 19 players onto and off of the roster that season. Most of them were too young, too old or too limited to matter. Carter was a legit scorer and role player. John Block got picked as the team's lone All-Star. But the great Hal Greer was 36 by then, playing 38 games as a bit player in his final season. Bill Bridges, a three-time All-Star, and Mel Counts, who won titles with Boston in his first two NBA seasons, began the season in Philadelphia but were traded in November to the Lakers for Leroy Ellis and John Q. Trapp.
The suffering did pay some dividends -- Philadelphia got the No. 1 pick in the 1973 draft and selected Doug Collins, who became a four-time All-Star before injuries ended his career. The team began its climb back to respectability, winning 25, then 34, then 46, reaching the NBA Finals in 1977 with Julius Erving, Lloyd Free, Darryl Dawkins and George McGinnis.
The players on that squad -- "9-73 in '72-73" hardly was a rallying cry -- eventually did get their upside-down bragging rights, though at the time, they mostly were worn out and embarrassed. Carter, named the team's MVP, didn't know whether to feel proud or insulted. And as he recently told longtime Sixers beat writer Phil Jasner of the Philadelphia Daily News: "When we walked through airports, I used to turn my travel bag with the logo against me so people didn't know who we were."
People may not have known then, but they know now. Thirty-seven years ago they made history, in the worst of ways.
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