Jordan's Bobcats are the NBA's worst team ever
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Michael Jordan's No. 23 has long been synonymous with greatness. Now that number has a completely different meaning for him.
As Jordan watched from his luxury box, his Charlotte Bobcats lost their 23rd consecutive game Thursday night 104-84 to New York Knicks and finished the shrunken season with the worst winning percentage in NBA history (.106). That means the man recognized globally as the greatest basketball player ever is the not-so-proud owner of the worst NBA team ever.
A spectacular resume that includes six NBA championships and five league MVP awards would also include one very forgettable season for the record book.
It had been 39 years since an NBA team finished with a worse winning percentage than the Bobcats. In a full season, the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers finished 9-73 (.110).
In this lockout-shortened regular season, the Bobcats finished a woeful 7-59 — and they are every bit as bad as the numbers indicate.
They're last in league scoring and shooting percentage. They lost 22 games by 20 points or more. It's hard to decide what's worse, their offense or their defense.
This year's Bobcats were everything Jordan wasn't as a player — unproductive, uncompetitive and unwatchable.
Jordan told the Charlotte Observer on Wednesday that he knew this was going to be a trying year, but didn't expect it would be this bad.
"But did we want to chase the most pingpong balls (in the May 30 draft lottery)? No way," Jordan told the newspaper. "Ever since I've owned the team I think we've made some very positive moves on the business side. We had to make a difficult decision to turn over the talent. This year the talent we had didn't respond, but that doesn't cause me to turn my back on the plan."
While Jordan was sticking to his plan, the Bobcats were painful to watch.
No one on the roster comes close to having Jordan's charisma — not to mention his ability to dominate. They lack a face for the franchise, at least on the court.
And all that's on Jordan.
His reputation as an executive continues to take hit after hit, just the way he used to make game-winning shot after shot.
Jordan's questionable decision-making has landed the Hall of Famer at the center of a debate about which former star turned NBA executive has done the worst job.
Jordan spent a season-and-a-half in Washington as team president and later as a part-time player. And while the Wizards were attractive at the box office, they were horrible as a team and owner Abe Pollin ultimately fired Jordan.
Jordan was criticized for trading Juwan Howard and Richard Hamilton, drafting Kwame Brown with the No. 1 overall pick and signing Larry Hughes to a big contract. He resurfaced as a minority owner with the Bobcats in 2006 and assumed control of basketball decisions under the watch of former team owner Bob Johnson.
Yet poor personnel decisions continued to plague him.
The Bobcats swung and missed on draft picks Adam Morrison and Alexis Ajinca. They traded away a first-round pick to get Tyrus Thomas, who's been a flop and is still owed $26 million over the next three seasons.
The Bobcats managed to reach the playoffs two years ago under Jordan — who became majority owner in March 2010 — but after being swept in four games by the Orlando Magic he decided to blow up the roster and start over.
The top six players from that team — Stephen Jackson (San Antonio), Gerald Wallace (New Jersey), Raymond Felton (Portland), Boris Diaw (Sacramento), Nazr Mohammed (Oklahoma City) and Tyson Chandler (New York) — have been either traded or waived.
"We were vying for that eighth and ninth spot and we looked at that and said, 'How can we get to be one of those one, two, three or four teams?'" Jordan said in December. "To do that, you have to grab assets and that's what we did. We had to create flexibility."
At the time, Jordan asked fans to be patient, knowing it would take time to reload, but even he couldn't have imagined this big of a mess.
"I think this is not a wasted season because who knows how good we can be?" Jordan said before it started. "We've got some good pieces that can help us get to the playoffs. I'm not waiting until next year. I think we have a good quality basketball team this year."
The won-loss column says otherwise.
Jordan led the Bulls to an NBA-record 72 wins during the 1995-96 regular season. Meanwhile, the Bobcats are 185-290 in six seasons under Jordan and have only made the postseason once. They've never won a playoff game.
Charlotte became the butt of jokes this season.
"It has been tough, but we are just trying to move forward," guard D.J. Augustin said before Thursday's loss. "Many people are laughing at us and making (the losing streak) as a joke, but we take it very seriously. We are just trying to stay positive and play hard until the end."
Even Jordan's friends and colleagues have been critical of his job performance.
"I think the biggest problem has been I don't know if he has hired enough people around him who he will listen to," NBA analyst Charles Barkley said during a radio interview on ESPN. "One thing about being famous is the people around you. You pay all their bills so they very rarely disagree with you because they want you to pick up the check. They want to fly around on your private jet so they never disagree with you. I don't think Michael has hired enough people around him who will disagree."
One thing everyone can agree on: This was not a season to remember.
Great players, bad executives
Not all great NBA players make great NBA executives. With Michael Jordan's Charlotte Bobcats in line to finish this season with perhaps the worst record in NBA history, a list of five executives who dazzled as players and baffled as decision-makers:
1. Isiah Thomas
It's easy to forget that Thomas, a Hall of Fame player with the Detroit Pistons, had moments of brilliance in his career as an executive. In Toronto, he drafted Tracy McGrady, Marcus Camby and Damon Stoudemire. Of course, most of those successes were completely overshadowed by his failures as president of the New York Knicks — most notably marked by giving big contracts to marginal players and acquiring Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry, followed by a sexual harassment scandal, clashes with players and the scorn of fans. "One of the biggest regrets of my life" is how Thomas described the inability to make the Knicks a winner. They never won a playoff game with Thomas as coach or president. And this doesn't include his tenure owning the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association.
2. Michael Jordan
As a player, his 1995-96 Chicago Bulls set an NBA record by winning 72 times in one season, and Jordan played in every single one of those victories. Now the owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, the six-time NBA champion player is enduring the other side — maybe the worst season in NBA history. At 7-58 entering their final game of the year Thursday against the New York Knicks, the Bobcats are on the cusp of futility. And all this comes a decade or so after Jordan flopped when he was running the basketball operations for the Washington Wizards, his biggest misstep there being drafting Kwame Brown No. 1 overall out of high school in 2001. Two years later, after Jordan returned to play for the Wizards, he questioned Brown's effort on the court more than once.
3. Kevin McHale
Great player, coach who almost got Houston into this season's playoffs, but made one of the most costly mistakes in league history. As an executive with the Minnesota Timberwolves, McHale was linked to a mess where the team entered into an under-the-table deal with Joe Smith, agreeing to give him a series of one-year contracts and then reward his patience with a longer-term big-money agreement — a move that gave the team flexibility to get other players under the salary cap. The NBA voided the last year of Smith's deal with Minnesota, fined the Timberwolves and took away three first-round picks. It bears noting McHale wasn't all bad: Sure, he traded the rights to Brandon Roy for Randy Foye, but he also picked a high schooler named Kevin Garnett in 1995.
4. Elgin Baylor
The NBA's executive of the year in 2006 still finds his way onto this list. Baylor — who once scored 71 points in a game and was the league's No. 1 pick in 1958 — was hired by the basketball operations office of the Los Angeles Clippers in 1986. In 22 seasons, the Clippers finished over .500 only twice, and won just one playoff series on Baylor's watch. Over that span, the Clippers posted a record of 619-1,153, the most losses and the third-worst winning percentage in the NBA over that stretch, further magnified by the fact that the Los Angeles Lakers were the league's best team (1,134-638) in those years. Baylor also struggled as a coach, going 86-135 with the New Orleans Jazz in the 1970s.
5. Chris Mullin
At Golden State, they loved Mullin as a player. As an executive, not so much. Mullin was the team's executive vice president of basketball operations for five seasons from 2004 through 2009, the team's winning percentage of .456 ranking 19th in the NBA over those years. The team and Mullin parted ways in a breakup that appeared to be foreshadowed when the smooth left-handed shooter lost much of his authority in a power struggle. Mullin was rarely even seen publicly at the team's arena during the final year of his tenure. He's returned a few times since, including last month when his No. 17 jersey was retired — a ceremony marred by Warriors fans booing team owner Joe Lacob.