Top 5 Big NBA Losing Teams with the Biggest Turnarounds

ARTICLE CREATED BY: Miguel Balinado

There is no better feeling in the world than to see your favorite sports team growing from one of the league’s biggest laughingstocks and punching bags into becoming one of the most dominant teams the league has ever seen.

Gone are the days that opposing teams feel that the calendar day against the team you root for is another term for “off days” or “the day to rest our starting 5”.

From teams that suffered long years of mediocrity before rising and turning things around to teams that almost have lost the season but willed on and become winners anyway, here are the NBA’s five (5) biggest losing teams with the biggest turnarounds of the past two decades.

5. Boston Celtics

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The Paul Pierce-led Boston Celtics of the 2006-07 season had an abysmal record of 24-58. “The Truth” is joined in the team by the starters, Kendrick Perkins (C), Ryan Gomes (PF), Wally Szczerbiak (SF), and Sebastian Telfair (PG).

On what seemed to be a decade of stay in NBA’s purgatory, after the aforementioned disastrous season, The C’s have other plans for the 2007-’08 season as they landed the sharpshooting veteran Ray Allen via a blockbuster trade with the now-defunct Seattle Supersonics. Then just a few days after what was an NBA landscape-changing blockbuster trade, they struck another NBA All-Star in the form of Minnesota Timberwolves’ Kevin Garnett.

The blockbuster moves would pay off after just merely a few months as the Boston Celtics would capture their 17th NBA Championship trophy and remained to become one of the NBA’s most feared teams in the Eastern Conference for years to come.

4. Brooklyn Nets

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Ironically, the fourth team on our list of the NBA’s biggest turnarounds is that of the team that the Boston Celtics eventually got their best draft picks of the recent years from and that is none other than the Brooklyn Nets.

Some of the league’s rising stars such as Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Kyle Kuzma, and Draymond Green could have been all wearing the black and white if not due to the infamous Billy King trade moves that landed them their “supposed to be” a championship-caliber lineup of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry, Joe Johnson, Deron Williams, and Brook Lopez.

A trade that is a league-dominating caliber one on paper but has translated to nothing but a series of disastrous seasons.

Fast forward to the 2016 season and beyond, with the Brooklyn Nets’ hiring of its current General Manager in Sean Marks.

The team’s fortunes began to turn around with a mix of its players’ collective blue-collar grit brand of play and meme-worthy unmatched dancing bench mob which became the symbol of the team’s undeniable chemistry.

From a group of once-misfits and rejects in the likes of D’Angelo Russell, Joe Harris, Caris LeVert, and Spencer Dinwiddie. The team has attracted the league’s biggest stars such as Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden, forming the team’s superstar line-up.

A team that had become the league’s biggest laughingstock suddenly turned into a team where the stars want to play, the Brooklyn Nets surely have turned the tides and the Basketball Gods themselves into their favor.

3. Milwaukee Bucks

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The Giannis Antetoukounmpo-led Bucks has dominated the Eastern Conference for years and even with a stronger East this past season, The Freak and his juggernaut of a team have squeezed out a win against the Olympic gold medalist Kevin Durant and his formidable Brooklyn Nets team and then went on to win the championship against the over-achieving young team of the Phoenix Suns.

Due to the recent successes of the “Fear the Deer” squad, it is easy to forget where they have been the past decade and that is at the NBA’s non-achieving yet non-tanking NBA’s middle territory.

2. Denver Nuggets

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The 2004-05 team of the Denver Nuggets had caught the attention of the NBA historians and

Basketball fans in general with their record of having the biggest 2nd half-season turnaround.

From a mediocre record of 24-29. The then-rookie Carmelo Anthony lead his team to the promised land as they improved to a 25-4 second half (season) record.

This earned them a trip to the 2005 NBA Western Conference Finals against the team that had won it all that season, the San Antonio Spurs.

Even with the heartbreaking loss to the NBA Champions, the Denver Nuggets had still accomplished a feat that is something to be proud of for any team in the league where the best basketball players in the world compete.

1. Golden State Warriors

It was on April 14th, 2010, the injury-ravaged team of the Golden State Warriors was left with nothing but only six (6) active players. Injuries and technical fouls are certainly not in the favor of the Dubs on that night but in a weird yet miraculous kind of way, The Monta Ellis and the then-rookie Stephen Curry-led team had managed to combine a whopping score of 76 points and defeated the healthier (and much more complete) Portland Trailblazers in OT with a score of 119-114.

Years later, the game had become symbolic of the franchise’s historic turnaround as they became one of the league’s most dominant teams in the NBA for almost a decade.

The Splash Brothers duo of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson joining forces with one of the best pure athletes the league has ever seen, Kevin Durant has become one of the most formidable forces ever formed in today’s NBA.