Where the Mavericks sit on the list of Worst Franchises in the NBA

The players have spoken, officially landing the Mavs on the “worst” list

The Athletic recently conducted an anonymous survey of NBA players, asking them to vote on a simple question: what is the league’s worst organization? There is not much context relative to what constitutes the “worst” in this scenario, leaving it up to the opinion of the voter. Is it management? Geography? Culture? Current success? Hope for the future? For something as subjective as this, it’s safe to assume all of the above and more factor into each player’s respective vote.

10 of the 30 NBA franchises garnered 1% or more of the total votes, with your Dallas Mavericks falling just on the good side of the midway point, landing them worse than only the Charlotte Hornets, Washington Wizards, New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, and Philadelphia 76ers. For perspective, four of the five teams ranked worse than Dallas on this list, had fewer than 25 wins this season.

Pay close attention to the details here though, as that is where the Devil likes to live. I’ve long championed the notion that statistics are true lies – that is, in the right (wrong?) hands, they can be made to illustrate a picture on the surface that may not be the full story.

You’ll notice that only 113 players actually voted in the survey, thus making the Mavericks’ 4.4% equal to five players. Roughly 500 players call the NBA home, so 113 is at least a reasonable sample size for something of this nature, but 4.4% may mislead the viewer into believing a bigger real number of players felt this way.

While no team wants to appear on this list, the real takeaway for Mavs fans may be that this is a very favorable outcome considering the current state of things in Big D. There was a joke amongst the staff here at MMB that the five Mav votes came from Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber, Markieff Morris, Quentin Grimes and Christian Wood!

With all due respect to the Hornets and Wizards, their ranking and percentages on this pole are a bit more meaningful, with Charlotte in particular running away with the dubious victory. It is also curious to see the 76ers on this list at all, given their die-hard fanbase in the City of Brotherly Love. The New York Knicks are also a curiosity for a similar reason, particularly as they are as good as they have been in recent years and holding the 3 Seed in the Eastern Conference. Again, their real number of votes is miniscule and Dallas mercifully falls much closer to the good side than the bad. Maybe all that talk about no one ever again wanting to play here is overblown afterall!