10 Ways To Tell You're Rooting For A Bad NBA Team

[Dulce]

10 Ways To Tell You're Rooting For A Bad NBA Team
New Jersey Nets at Dallas Mavericks Basketball

My name is Patrick Crawley and I've been rooting for a bad NBA team, the Sacramento Kings, since I was five years old.

Sure, the Kings enjoyed a glorious run from 1998 to 2003, but they have had a winning record just eight times in my 26-year lifetime. The majority of my years as a fan have been filled with disappointment.

Unfortunately, this makes me something of an expert on franchise futility, which is why I devised the following list of 10 guidelines to determine whether or not you are rooting for a bad team.

What you're about to read is a litmus test. If you answer yes to six or more of the following questions, your team is bad like Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. If not, consider yourself lucky.

Let's get started.

Feel free to keep score at home.

1. Does your team have a record under .500?

Basic math: fewer wins than losses equals bad team. This isn't true in every case, but it's a good guideline to start with. Plus, I'm almost certain it's the way Charles Barkley would measure this sort of thing.

Twelve NBA teams get a strike based on this one - New Jersey, Minnesota, Golden State, Indiana, Washington, Sacramento, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, L.A. Clippers and New Orleans - making it the single deadliest qualification on my list. Just call it the Smoke Monster.

Los Angeles Clippers and Boston Celtics action


2. Does your team have a point differential under -4?

Good teams outscore their opponents. Mediocre teams score about the same number of points as their opponents. And bad teams score fewer points than their opponents. Pretty straightforward, right?

I give mediocre teams a window of +/- 4 points because I think any team that's routinely within 4 points of their opponent - ahead, behind, whatever - deserves the benefit of a doubt.

If you think point differential is a bad system for identifying bad teams, check out this distribution: there are currently eight teams in the league with a point differential at or below negative 4 points (Detroit, Washington, Indiana, New Jersey, Sacramento, L.A. Clippers, Golden State and Minnesota) and eight teams with a differential above 4 points.

Can you say Bell Curve?

3. Are there fewer than two players on your team capable of starting for the Cavaliers?

I'll put it this way: if the NBA dissolved your favorite team and gave the Cavs the option to take as many players from that team as they wanted with the requirement that they start those players in all of their remaining games, would they choose more than one?

If so, chances are you have a decent team.

If not, there's always the draft because, barring a ton of cap space, that's the only way your team is going to upgrade its talent level.

Just for fun, let's put the Cleveland corollary to the test. I think the Cavs would take the following players from the following teams...

New Jersey: Brook Lopez
Minnesota: Al Jefferson or Kevin Love (depending on LeBron James' preference)
Golden State: Stephen Curry
Indiana: Danny Granger
Sacramento: Tyreke Evans
Detroit: Rip Hamilton (old, but more reliable than Anthony Parker)
New York: Danilo Gallinari (debatable)
Washington: Nobody (not even a healthy Josh Howard)
Philly: Andre Iguodala, Elton Brand (just kidding)
L.A. Clippers: Eric Gordon, Chris Kaman
New Orleans: a healthy Chris Paul, David West

We'll stop there.

A pretty good measuring stick, no?

4. Does your team lack a closer?

For every Oklahoma City or Sacramento - teams fortunate enough/wise enough to draft a bona fide clutch guy - there are three or four closer-less teams fumbling around in crunch time, hoping for a miracle. And hoping for miracles is far from an ideal strategy for winning games.

So, yes. Closers matter. If your favorite team doesn't have one, they probably aren't that good.

Just for the record, the following teams lack a go-to crunch time performer in my opinion: New Jersey, Minnesota, New York, Washington, Philly, L.A. Clippers, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, Charlotte, Milwaukee and Orlando.

And please don't tell me Vince Carter is Orlando's closer. He may be responsible for 69 last second shots this decade, but that doesn't mean he's good at them. It just means he's played for three closer-less teams.

Who else was going to take the final shot on the 2000-01 Raptors? Charles Oakley? Mark Jackson? Muggsy Bogues?


Magic's Carter drives to basket against Bulls in Chicago

5. Do fans of your team get overly excited about mid-tier rookies and/or insist mediocre players "will be good someday"?

If so, it's not a good sign. Fans that get excited about these kinds of things have been conditioned by years of losing. Their team lacks contender-level talent, so they start extrapolating future success for players who unfortunately aren't that good.

Take Jason Thompson, for example.

J.T. is a nice guy, a hustle player who quickly became a fan favorite for the Kings last season because, well, there wasn't much else to cheer about - that's what 17 wins will do to a fanbase. Thompson played hard and showed a passion for the game. Kings fans took to him to the point that they were unwilling to include him in a potential trade for Rajon Rondo this summer.

Billed as Sacramento's power forward of the future, Thompson has shown flashes of brilliance in his second season. And though has incrementally improved his per game stats. But he's ultimately a flawed player. 139 games into his pro career, J.T. is still committing silly fouls and struggling to forge an offensive identity. Plus, he can't guard Don Nelson's beer belly at this point.

The point is this: Kings fans, myself included, projected great things for Thompson based on the fact that we had a really lousy season last year and he was one of the lone bright spots. Now he's proving to be a middle of the road power forward.

Other "he's going to be good someday" guys: Yi Jianlian on the Nets, Corey Brewer on the Wolves, Roy Hibbert on the Pacers, JaVale McGee on the Wizards, Lou Williams on the Sixers, Wilson Chandler on the Knicks and Mike Conley on the Grizzlies.

6. Does your team boost attendance with promotions like Free Tax Night?

Don't get me wrong. Free Tax Night with Roni Deutch is a creative promotion and a brilliant way to get the beyond-awful Nets into the news. But it reeks of desperation.

Nothing says "we have the lowest attendance in the league" louder than a half-baked scheme involving the queen of tax returns. The Nets may as well have taken out a full-page ad in the New Jersey Star-Ledger saying "We suck."

Promotions are fun, but good teams don't have to pull that crap. Their product sells itself - if you want a cushy job, go sell tickets in Cleveland or Los Angeles (Lakers, not Clippers); you won't have to do a thing. There's a reason the Cavaliers' attendance went from last in the league in 2003 to second this season. Talent sells tickets.

There are exceptions, Milwaukee and New Orleans have struggled to bring fans to the arena this season despite being in playoff contention, but typically out-of-left-field promotions are a surefire sign of a bad team.

Other than Roni Deutch Night, the best promotions I've seen in the NBA this season were $1 Beer Night in Sacramento and Snuggie Night in Cleveland, which was more for fun than anything else. The Clippers had Singles Night, which counts, but is completely lame.

Let me know in the comments section if I missed any good ones.

7. Is your coach on the hot seat?

Take it from a guy who roots for a team that has changed coaches four times in four years, a coach on the hot seat is a bad sign.

Hot seats are a sign of instability and, in many cases, an unhappy locker room. Coaches rarely bounce back from hot seat status. When they do, it's either a minor miracle - Tom Coughlin with the New York Giants - or the result of a substantial personnel change, which is good news for Flip Saunders in Washington.

The hot seat theory spells doom for the Bulls, Pacers, Warriors and Sixers, and makes fans in New York, Minnesota and Detroit slightly uncomfortable.

For the record, I'm counting every team with an interim coach as a "hot seat" team because it's safe to say none of them will take the reins full-time next season. That means New Jersey, New Orleans and the L.A. Clippers get a strike.

Sorry, Kim Hughes. You never stood a chance.


Wizards Timberwolves in Washington.

8. Did your team make trades at the deadline for the sole reason of cutting costs?

I'm looking at you, Wizards.

Washington set an unofficial fire sale record this season by dumping Antawn Jamison, Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood (cumulative salary: $66.5 million) in the span of 5 days. The Wiz eliminated roughly 50 percent of their production and replaced it with...Josh Howard and Al Thornton. Talk about taking a punch to the stomach. You could almost hear the life being sucked from Wizards fans. It was horrible.

Now they root for a team that starts zero stars. Randy Foye, Mike Miller, Al Thornton, Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee. That's not a starting lineup. It's a funeral march. I feel bad for everybody involved.

Other nominees for salary dump of the year: Knicks, Bulls, Clippers and Jazz.

9. Would your general manager have a difficult time running a Denny's, let alone an NBA team?

Some guys are qualified to run an NBA team and some are better off, I don't know, painting portraits of Paul Pierce's face on a polygraph machine.

If your GM falls into the latter category, you should probably run out and buy a silver glove because, like Michael Jackson, your team is bad.

General managers who don't pass the Denny's test: Chris Wallace of the Grizzlies, David Kahn of the Timberwolves, Ed Stefanski of the 76ers, Larry Riley of the Warriors, Bryan Colangelo of the Raptors, and Larry Bird of the Pacers.

Joe Dumars is on the verge of Denny's status after signing Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva for a combined $95 million this summer, but the Pistons won a championship on his watch, so I'm willing to give him more of a cushion than the others.

And, just in case you're wondering, no, I won't be pulling a Mark Cuban to apologize for this Denny's comment. You won't see me serving up Grand Slams to the elderly this weekend.

10. Is a paper bag your team's most popular piece of memorabilia?

The Lakers have car flags. The Cavs have Snuggies. The Magic have Superman capes. And the Nets, Wolves and Wizards have vomit bags.

Not really. It's symbolic. But you get the idea.

Other disgraced memorabilia: Warriors matador capes, Pacers tire track t-shirts, and Kings pacifiers.

Now on sale at a team store near you!

10 Ways To Tell You're Rooting For A Bad NBA Team - Sidelines