The Tartan

By Jaden Singh

Victor Wembanyama was hyped as one of the best prospects to enter the league in decades, and he has delivered. His stats are good, but what most stands out now, and what will always stand out throughout his career, is how Wembanyama makes plays that no one else has. An eight foot wingspan is as unfair as it looks, and trying to shoot over Victor is similar to trying to stop him from dunking on you – don’t bother if you are under 6’6’’, and your odds don’t improve much in the typical 6’9 – 7’0 range most centers inhabit. Wembanyama, as expected, is arriving in force.

Do the Wizards, Spurs, Hornets, Pistons, and Trail Blazers know this? Are they aware Victor Wembanyama has already been drafted and is currently the Rookie of the Year favorite? Is there some mythology going around front offices where breaking the NBA losses record allows you to draft last year’s players as well? All five teams currently boast net ratings at -8.4 points per 100 possessions or worse, which historically is a strong indicator of being a truly awful basketball team. And yeah, all five have been truly awful. The Charlotte Hornets have the second-best record of this group, a cheery 10-35, but at -11.9 have the fifth worst net rating in NBA history. Before last Saturday’s upset victory against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the San Antonio Spurs (who really should know Wembanyama isn’t in the 2024 draft class) went almost three months without defeating a team not included in this group. Detroit broke the single-season losing streak record at 28 in a row. The Trail Blazers have scraped out more wins than these other teams but have watched Scoot Henderson, their own star rookie, stumble into a season where he has converted 37 percent of his field goals and turned the ball over at one of the highest rates in the league (although lately Scoot has shown more promise). Portland was also handed the fifth-worst loss ever by Oklahoma City in a 139-77 drubbing in January. Washington is a sort of vanilla all-around-bad team that achieved their first winning streak of the season last week by successively beating Detroit and San Antonio. Five out of Washington’s nine wins have been against the Pistons, Hornets, Spurs, or Trail Blazers. 

None of these teams should be here! Washington has the best excuse – this was a clear blow-it-up-and-rebuild year, with former all-stars Bradley Beal and Kristaps Porzingis being traded away in the offseason. But their roster is much more developed than most young and bad teams, with Kyle Kuzma and Jordan Poole being the supposed base of what was theoretically a respectable NBA squad. To Poole’s credit in particular, that is not panning out. The Pistons, holding onto decent veterans like Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks, had the apparent impression that playoff or play-in contention could be in the cards this year. After all, Detroit rosters six young players selected in the lottery (four of which quite promising). Talent and athleticism do not always equate to shooting ability, however, and 15 percent, 29 percent, 33 percent, and 34 percent three point shooting from Ausar Thompson, Killian Hayes, Jaden Ivey, and Cade Cunningham, respectively, is distant from modern standards for non-bigs. Thompson, Hayes, and Ivey have struggled to find minutes as a result. Meanwhile, Wembanyama alone should have made the Spurs more competitive, but poor early season implementation of their 7’4” center and a lack of guard playmaking has made for an awkward first chapter of Wemby’s career. LaMelo Ball, once more passing greatly, has not made up for the total unseriousness both he and the Charlotte roster exhibit. Portland could have been fine – they were keeping up a top-10 defense earlier in the year – but injuries and depth issues have jeopardized consistency. Deandre Ayton, to everyone’s surprise, remains a terrible contract. 

The NBA generally has very poor teams. Deliberately losing to improve draft position, especially later in the season, happens all the time. The current strangeness is twofold: one part is that there are five entirely different teams that take nearly certain defeats when matched up against any of the other 25. The second part is that a generational prospect in this year’s draft does not exist! The 2024 class instead looks to be one of the weakest in some time. 2025 is forecasted to have strong players, and 2023 had Victor and Scoot, but 2024 doesn’t even have a definite number one yet. Of all the years to feature such widespread ineptitude, this is one of the most pointless ones.