The Embarrassment

THE TEAMS THAT FELL SHORT NBA 2025-26: Top 5 Biggest Negative Team Surprises

#1 — THE TANKING BLOC — Washington, Indiana, Brooklyn, Utah, Memphis Combined record: approximately 103-307. The NBA's darkest corner.

This is not five separate stories. This is one story told five ways — and the NBA is embarrassed by all of them.

Washington finished 17-65, the worst record in the league, while simultaneously acquiring Trae Young and Anthony Davis at the trade deadline. Not to win games. To park them, manufacture injuries, collect the ping-pong balls and move on. Indiana lost Tyrese Haliburton before training camp started, finished 19-63 and spent the season in organizational standby mode. Brooklyn achieved exactly what it set out to achieve: a top-four lottery spot and a career season from Michael Porter Jr. as a bonus. Utah tanked with such commitment that they protected their OKC-owed pick all the way to its expiry date. Memphis traded Jaren Jackson Jr., watched Ja Morant disappear after 20 games, and finished 25-57 without a single meaningful game after January.

Five franchises. Zero competitive intent after the All-Star break. Adam Silver will convene a Board of Governors meeting specifically to address what happened here. Expanding the lottery to 18 teams is the leading proposal. The 2025-26 season was described by one executive as "an utter embarrassment unto basketball" — and that verdict is hard to dispute when approximately one-third of the league spent five months racing to the bottom.

The prize at the end of the tunnel is real: Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer and AJ Dybantsa headline a 2026 class that may be the strongest in a decade. But the means remain indefensible. The league knows it. The solution is coming. It is simply overdue.

#2 — NEW ORLEANS PELICANS — 18-64, Western Conference
Preseason expectation: Play-In contender. Actual: worst record in the West.

New Orleans had no first-round pick in 2026 — they traded it to Atlanta in the Derik Queen deal on draft night 2025. That decision, widely criticized at the time, became the defining verdict on the franchise's direction when the Pelicans finished 18-64.

Zion Williamson missed more than half the season. Jordan Poole was removed from the rotation. The coach was fired after a 2-10 start. What was supposed to be a play-in caliber team became a franchise in freefall — without the lottery compensation that would normally accompany such a collapse.

New Orleans is not merely a disappointment. It is a cautionary tale about organizational decision-making at every level: the contract extensions, the trade for a pick that now belongs to someone else, the failure to build around the most physically dominant player in basketball in a way that actually kept him on the floor. The Pelicans are the NBA's most persistent organizational failure. This season was their worst chapter yet.

#3 — ORLANDO MAGIC — 37-45, Play-In, Eastern Conference
Preseason Over/Under: 51.5 wins. Actual: -14.5

Orlando paid four first-round picks for Desmond Bane. They built around a core of Banchero, Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs with genuine championship-window ambitions. The market believed in them: 51.5 wins.

Franz Wagner played three games in 2026. Banchero missed his second consecutive All-Star Game. The offense ranked among the worst in the league for most of the season. The four first-round picks sent to Memphis are now assets helping a franchise that is actively rebuilding, not competing.

The cruelest detail: Desmond Bane himself was solid. His acquisition was not the problem. The problem is that Orlando gave away its entire future to add one piece to a team that needed more than one piece — and when the injuries hit, there was nothing left to absorb the damage. 14.5 wins below expectations. A Play-In exit imminent. And a franchise that spent its draft capital to win now and has no obvious answer for what comes next.

#4 — DALLAS MAVERICKS — 26-56, Western Conference
Preseason Over/Under: 41.5 wins. Actual: -15.5

Dallas won the lottery last year and landed Cooper Flagg. That was supposed to be the beginning of a new era. Instead, the 2025-26 season became a case study in how quickly a franchise can unravel when its stars disappear simultaneously.

Kyrie Irving missed the entire season with a torn ACL. Anthony Davis was traded to Washington. The roster around Flagg was the weakest of any lottery team in the league. Dallas won 26 games despite their rookie putting up 21.0/6.7/4.5 and two 45-point performances. The Mavericks weren't tanking — they simply had nothing left to compete with.

The silver lining is real and it is named Cooper Flagg. But 26 wins against a 41.5 over/under is a 15.5-game miss that reflects everything that went wrong outside of number one. Dallas enters next season with Flagg, a healthy Kyrie Irving's return, and questions about every other roster decision that has been made in the last 18 months.

#5 — MILWAUKEE BUCKS — 32-50, Eastern Conference, Lottery
Preseason Over/Under: 43.5 wins. Actual: -11.5

This is the most uncomfortable team story of the season — because the disappointment is inseparable from a wider dysfunction that nobody in the organization has been willing to name directly.

Milwaukee waived and stretched Damian Lillard's contract. Signed Myles Turner for four years and $109 million. Kept Doc Rivers. The plan was another playoff run. What followed was 32 wins, a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade saga that dragged through the entire season without resolution, Doc Rivers stepping away mid-saga, and a cap sheet in ruins with no clear path forward.

The hot potato between player and franchise defines the Bucks' 2025-26 season more than any game result. Everyone knows the marriage is over. Nobody has had the courage to say it. The Bucks enter the offseason with depleted draft capital, a max-max-max roster that isn't competitive, and a generational talent who wants a new chapter but hasn't said so publicly because doing so would cost him leverage.

Milwaukee's collapse is not about basketball. It is about an organization that made enormous financial commitments without a coherent plan and is now paying the price for every one of them.

HONORABLE MENTION — SACRAMENTO KINGS
A bad season, played with dignity.

Sacramento finished with one of the worst records in the Western Conference
(22-60). The coaching has been questioned all year. The roster construction has been baffling. Domantas Sabonis got hurt. The wins dried up.

And yet: the Kings never tanked. They never stopped competing. They played out the schedule with genuine effort on most nights, gave Maxime Raynaud a real role and watched him become one of the best stories of the season, and finished without the embarrassment that characterized the franchises above them in the standings.

In a season where tanking was practically institutionalized, Sacramento chose the harder path. They got nothing for it in the standings. They preserved something more difficult to quantify. In this particular NBA year, that deserves to be acknowledged.