Worst WNBA Teams of All Time: #5 Through #1

We continue with the WNBA's Ten Worst Teams (so far).

5. 1997 Utah Starzz: -1.890. Hey, in the inaugural season of the W, somebody had to be the worst team, and the luck of the draw fell to Utah. Their .374 shooting percentage was only .001 point ahead of the Phoenix Mercury for last place among all teams, and with the league shooting .414 on the average, the Starzz suffered in scoring points.

For the WNBA, 12 years is a long time. None of the players on the old Starzz roster are still playing. Wendy Palmer's last year was 1997 with Seattle. Coach Denise Taylor was fired after her first year when she compiled a 7-21 record. The Starzz are now the San Antonio Silver Stars, a victim of NBA owners washing their hands of WNBA teams. We all love the Silver Stars now, but the Stars/Starzz have the dubious distinction of having three of the worst teams of all time.

The 1997 Starzz finished at the bottom in attendance...and in their latter years, they were always in the fight for the bottom. Being in conservative Utah couldn't have helped.

In 1998, the Starzz would get the first pick of the WNBA Draft. They chose Margo Dydek. It wouldn't help. Let this be a lesson to you. Never listen to Elena Baranova.

4. 2006 Chicago Sky: -1.939. The expansion Chicago Sky set a dubious WNBA record - worst attendance of any team in WNBA history. The Sky averaged 3,390 in 2006 for the year and have never cracked 4,000 in an arena which seats 7,000 in their three-year history.

The Sky won their first game of the year, 83-82 against a team that no longer exists, the Charlotte Sting. Then they dropped their next 13 games before getting another win. Despite picking up Candice Dupree for that first 2006 season, it was a real struggle for Chicago. Their average margin of victory was minus 10.7. The team was at the bottom of the league in field goal shooting (39.4 percent) and free throw shooting (69.8 percent)

At the end of the first season, Dave Cowens fled to the NBA's Detroit Pistons. The team has never won more than 14 games in a season since its inception and has a franchise winning percentage of 30.9 percent (31-69).

Owner Michael Alter gave himself between three to five years to become either a winning team or a profitable team. With three of the five years up, we can only hope that he's making money.

3. 1999 Cleveland Rockers: -1.960. The Wikipedia entry for the Cleveland Rockers describes the 1999 season as "dismal". We can only agree, as the team only averaged 62.9 points a game.

It got so bad that Janice Braxton came out of retirement to suit up because she felt sorry for the Rockers. Then, she re-retired in June of the same year, leaving Cleveland with a weak front court. Isabelle Fijalkowski, their leading scorer and rebounder in 1998, decided not to come back to the W. Eva Nemcova went off to play for the Czechs. Suzie McConnell-Serio only played 18 games with them due to an injury.

The Rockers ended up losing their first seven games of the season until finally beating the Mystics, but wins would be hard to come by in Cleveland. The Rockers were 20-10 in 1998; they ended up 7-25 in 1999.

It got ugly in Cleveland. The highlight of the season was a fight with the (guess who) Detroit Shock that ended with a two game suspension for Tracy Henderson. Just minutes after Cleveland's final game, coach Linda Hill-MacDonald was shown the door. Her assistant, Susan Yow, was booted out with her.

2. 2004 San Antonio Silver Stars: -2.177. At 9-25, the Silver Stars would finish at the bottom of the Western Conference.

On paper, it didn't seem to be a bad team - the Silver Stars just couldn't win any games. They lost eight straight at one point to set a then franchise record. Maybe it was the coaching. They had LaToya Thomas and Marie Ferdinand-Harris. They had Adrienne Goodson.

Brown must have hoped that Shannon Johnson of the Connecticut Sun would be the key to a good season, having given up three draft picks for her in the offeason. However, Brown benched Margo Dydek for most of the season, and then resigned as coach after a 6-18 start, forcing Shell Dailey to take over. (He had to take over the previous year as well, when Candi Harvey was fired.)

After 2004, Jennifer Azzi decided to retire to go into the fitness business. It's hard to blame her.

(* * *)

And now...the Worst WNBA Team of All Time....

1. 2008 Atlanta Dream: -2.424. You had to ask?

Worst WNBA Teams of All Time: #10 Through #6

Earlier, I hinted that the use of standard deviation - a statistical concept - might help determine which teams historically have been the worst WNBA teams of all time.

Every year, there is a different sort of "scatter" among wins and losses in the WNBA. In one year, you can have extremes like 1998, in another year you have a lot of teams that have .500 records, like 2004. Every year in the league is different, but there is something called "standard deviation" - the idea that a certain percentage of teams will be within a certain range of a .500 record. (Since the number of games has differed from year to year in the W, we'll be looking at the standard deviation of winning percentage.)

About 67 percent of teams are within one standard deviation of the mean winning percentage. About 95 percent of teams are within two standard deviations. It's very rare to find a team in any year that's more than two standard deviations away from the mean of winning percentages. Undoubtedly, winning percentage is not distributed binomially, but the concept gives us a running start.

Ten Worst Teams in WNBA History

10. 1998 Washington Mystics: -1.682. This team finished with the worst winning percentage of any team in WNBA history - .100, a 3-27 record. The reason that they're not the first team on the list is because the "scatter" of teams was great in 1998 - two other teams, Sacramento and Washington, went 8-22. The average margin of victory was an amazing -15.4 points. They were at the bottom of the league in two of the four keys to victory: field goal percentage (.395), turnovers (625, 98 more than the 9th place team), and shot .645 from the free throw line.

At the time, it was the worst performance by an expansion team in the brief two years of WNBA history. It was a horribly young team, about 25 years old on average. At least the fans supported the "Mistakes" at the gate. They got Chamique Holdsclaw the following year as their number one draft pick, so the argument could be that they did a tank job. But if you look at their Pythagorean Percentage, this team actually overperformed.

9. 2000 Seattle Storm: -1.695. Another expansion team, this one finishing at 6-26 in its first year, at the bottom of the league. Like the 1998 Mystics, it too lost games by an average of about 10 points. Only the Miami Sol (another expansion team) shot worse from the field and the Storm were at the bottom of the league in offensive rebounding.

Coach Lin Dunn had to acquire and release players frequently in an attempt to keep the team in games. At least, the fans supported the "Drizzle" and at least they knew their audience. The WNBA was one of the first teams every to hold a "Gay Pride" night. The next year, they'd get Lauren Jackson as the first pick in the WNBA Draft and the team would never win less than 10 games again. Coach Dunn is still coaching (with the Fever) and the Storm clouds eventually cleared with a WNBA championship.

8. 2005 San Antonio Silver Stars: -1.715. Unlike the first two teams, the Silver Stars didn't have the excuse of expansion to explain their 7-27 finish. Nor did they lose games by more than 10 points.

It was Dan Hughes's first year as the San Antonio head coach. Hughes had been hired because the 2004 Silver Stars, believe it or not, were even worse. This was a good while before the Silver Stars had Becky Hammon, and they were not media darlings in any way. Hughes's job was to convince his players that the bad old days were over and things would be different. That was, until he could get rid of them - the top five scorers on the team in 2005 wouldn't be on it in 2007. Now, it looks like the Silver Stars are everyone's favorite team - but it wasn't always like that.

7. 2003 Phoenix Mercury: -1.867. Ever since 2000, the Mercury were on a downward slide, going from winning 20 games to a record of 8-26. A good 21 players saw time on a Mercury roster that year, including Plenette Pierson and Iziane Castro Marques.

It was the first year for head coach John Shumate, who implemented a new defensive scheme. The Mercury would lose eight games by five points or less, giving fans heartache pains and possibly serving as one of the reasons Shumate would flee to the NBA the following season. The only attraction was that Lisa Harrison was the sexiest babe in basketball. (Playboy wanted her to pose nude for them in 2001, but she turned them down.) In 2004, the Mercury would get a #1 draft pick, who would be Diana Taurasi, and four years later, they'd be WNBA champions without any help from Hugh Hefner.

6. 2005 Charlotte Sting: -1.886. 2005 was a banner year for the WNBA, with two worst teams of all time.

It would also be a heartbreaking year in another sense, as coach/GM Trudy Lacey dealt away Dawn Staley in the middle of the year. Lacey didn't last long, as she was kicked upstairs after a 3-21 start and Muggsy Bogues, an ex-NBA player with no coaching experience (he was working in real estate) was asked to turn the team around.

Management bet that the opening of a new arena, the Charlotte Bobcats Arena, would help turn things around. They selected Janel McCarville with the first pick in the 2005 WNBA Draft, but that Janel McCarville wasn't the Janel McCarville of the 2008 Liberty - she started only 3 games and shot a horrible 34 percent from the field in her rookie year and was best known for adding personal fouls rather than points.

In 2006, the Sting got their new arena, and finished 11-23. The next year, owner Robert Johnson did not wish to keep the club running, and with no purchasers, the Sting faded out of existence.