Lakers Set Record for Lowest Winning Percentage in Team History
The Los Angeles Lakers' season full of futility hit a new low in their 122-99 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday, as they set a record for the worst single-season winning percentage in team history.
Finishing the 2014-15 campaign at 21-61, the Lakers' .256 winning percentage eclipses the .264 mark set in 1957-58, when the team was still in Minneapolis. The team's worst previous mark in Los Angeles was .329, a number set just last season. The Lakers had already set a single-season worst for losses and will likely have their worst draft pick of the lottery era come June.
“With everything that’s happened this season, (the losing) is not stunning to me,” coach Byron Scott told reporters before the game. “It’s been a tough season, record-wise, injury-wise, all that stuff. You just take it with a grain of salt and you get ready for the next one.”
The Lakers have played a majority of the season with an injury-depleted lineup. Rookie Julius Randle, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Nick Young, all expected to be valuable contributors, each missed at least 40 games. Scott was stuck on an almost nightly basis mixing and matching his talents, nearly all of whom are playing on near-minimum contracts or heading toward free agency.
The result has been a two-way disaster almost never seen in franchise history. The Lakers were among the NBA's worst teams on both ends of the floor, a stagnant, predictable bunch on offense and a mistake-prone, undisciplined outfit on defense.
With the Clippers booming across the hall with two foundational stars in Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, what's concerning is how little light there is at the end of the tunnel. For the third straight offseason, the Lakers will enter the free-agency period with superstar designs. The first two left them walking away empty-handed and led to the darkest two-year period in history.
The pressure to fix things, to say the least, has never been greater.
Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter
