To say that Oklahoma City fans are going through a rough time this Friday, December 3 is an understatement. The Thunder have just eaten the worst jerk in history with a 73-pawn loss. It’s huge and it’s quite simply a new NBA record. But they’re not the first to take such a beating, so we pull out the grimoire to look back on the worst defeats in history. Honor the losers!
This morning when waking up, no one escaped these unreal images of the box score between OKC and Memphis: 152-79. We know a lot of them who must have rubbed their eyes several times and told themselves that they had perhaps raised their elbow a little too much to see such a score. But no, it is on a 73-point gap – that is to say the number of Draft rounds hatched by the Oklahoma franchise – that the two teams separated last night. “Thanks” to this defeat, the Thunder goes down in history with the label of the biggest loser in NBA history on a game. -73, this is the temperature that could be obtained by adding the winter trends in the depths of Siberia and Antarctica. Two lost places where Thunder players could go and hide, but even there, there’s a way we’ve heard of this historic bustle. Yes because with this defeat, Coach Daigneault’s troop beats an old record of thirty years …
Biggest win in NBA history:
73 — Grizzlies vs OKC tonight
68 — Cavs vs Heat in 1991
65 — Pacers vs Blazers in 1998 pic.twitter.com/ov0qZicQzj— StatMuse (@statmuse) December 3, 2021
Let’s go back. On December 17, 1991, the Heat moved to Cleveland. Floridians therefore leave the winter mildness of Miami to curdle them after a three-hour flight in Ohio. Obviously it’s the thermal shock and the Heat will not make a spark to warm up. On the contrary, the Cavs of Steve Kerr, Brad Daugherty, Mark Price or Larry Nance (the father eh) will take the opportunity to ride over them with a 148-80 victory. We then have the impression of seeing the end of the year game between the coaches and the parents and that gives us 68 points of difference. The icing on the cake, at the airport the staff of the Heat are obliged to pay the supplement for obviously too heavy luggage. A very complicated evening for the Miami franchise, which only existed for three years in the NBA. It was hard to believe that this record would one day fall, it will have lasted three decades before succumbing to lightning.
Never two without three and now that we know the two biggest jerks in the history of the NBA, let’s move on to the last step of this unenviable podium. For once the match does not take place in December but in February, more particularly on February 28, 1998. We are therefore not in the harvest season and yet… That evening, the NBA offers a Pacers – Blazers which seems balanced between two teams at about the same level, although Larry Bird’s farmers start with a slight advantage. In the end it is a real carnage and the teammates of Father Sabonis and Rasheed Wallace take the beating of their lives: 59-124 and return to Oregon naked. 65 points difference is therefore the third largest defeat in NBA history. Special mention also to the 1972 Warriors, who had been boned by the Lakers of Jerry West (162-99, 63 points difference) and who fell to fourth place losers this morning. The podium is always played within a few points!
The Thunder, the Heat and the Blazers, this is the new trifecta in the history of the biggest NBA beatings. A ranking not really glorious but which at least makes these teams enter the books and certainly for a while. Next step for the Thunder? Succeed in taking the first three places, there are still 60 games left!
Text Source: StatMuse
