Which Teams Have Had The Worst Luck To Start The 2025-26 NBA Season?

You’ve all heard the saying that ‘it’s better to be lucky than good.’ That couldn’t be truer with sports. We all want to believe that hard work conquers all and that the game will give you exactly what you put into it. But the hard truth is that while working hard puts you in a great position to succeed, you still need Lady Luck to smile on you.

In the NBA, there are two things that teams have very little control over but greatly impact winning and losing: injuries and opponent 3-point shooting.

The injuries part of it is obvious. They suck to think about, but they are a part of sports. And no matter how great of a medical staff you have, the dreaded injury bug can put a damper on even the most promising of seasons (see the 2020-21 Brooklyn Nets).

As for opponent 3-point shooting, threes have long been considered the great equalizer. The reason for this is that these shots are incredibly volatile, and defenses have very little influence over whether they go in or not, especially wide-open ones (which is what we will be focusing on here). In today’s game, every team is taking at least 30 threes per game. So, if one team has opponents hitting threes at a higher rate against them than others, it could swing some games against them.

Teams With The Worst Injury Luck To Start The Season

To start, here are the teams that have lost the most player games due to injury (courtesy of the good people at Spotrac):

It is no coincidence that the Indiana Pacers (who are 4-16, and 13th in the Eastern Conference) have had the most man games lost due to injury. Coming into the season, conventional wisdom would have told you that they would at least maintain respectability (even with their All-NBA point guard likely out for the season). However, with Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, T.J. McConnell, Obi Toppin, and Bennedict Mathurin missing a combined 55 games, it has been hard to even do that.

Interestingly enough, the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that has managed to stay relatively healthy over the last few years, are second on this list. This hasn’t really slowed them down, though, considering they have won all but one of their first 21 games.

Of course, looking strictly at games missed doesn’t tell the full story. Are these teams missing their stars, or is it just a bunch of guys who normally aren’t in the rotation anyway?

Being a website that specializes in the financial aspect of sports, Spotrac also tracks the amount of cash each team has lost due to injury. This is useful because the best players (generally) also get paid the most. With this in mind, here are the teams that have lost the most money so far this season:

Hey, look, it’s the Pacers again! Along with them, we have the Dallas Mavericks (another team I thought would be pretty solid this year), Philadelphia 76ers, New Orleans Pelicans, and Miami Heat, rounding out the top five. The Pelicans and Mavericks are two of the four worst teams in the West right now. Meanwhile, the 76ers have maintained relevancy (thanks in large part to the brilliance of Tyrese Maxey), and the Heat have been one of the best stories in the league to start the season – behind an offensive system that could change the NBA forever.

Teams With The Worst Opponent Shooting Luck To Start The Season

As we mentioned earlier, we are going to focus on opponent shooting on wide-open threes, since there is quite literally nothing a defense can do to affect those shots (you know, because they are wide open).

Here are the teams that have allowed the highest percentage on wide-open threes:

The Nets – who are tied with the Washington Wizards for last in defensive rating – allow the highest percentage in this category, followed by the Charlotte Hornets (who are 24th). Neither of these teams boasts great defensive personnel, but the fact that teams can’t miss against them probably doesn’t help.

One year after finishing third in defensive rating, the Los Angeles Clippers are now 25th. Yes, they are an older team than they were a season ago, but Ivica Zubac is still the man anchoring the middle for them. So, the way teams are spraying the ball against them at an inordinate rate at least partially helps explain this decline.

By the way, kudos to the Phoenix Suns and Orlando Magic for maintaining above-average units on that end of the floor, despite the basketball gods being so cruel to them.

What Can We Learn From This?

While regression to the mean is never guaranteed in an 82-game season, teams that are getting hit hard in these areas could be due for a bounce back if things start going their way.

Take the Hornets, for instance. They are in the top 10 in both of these stats, but if you are actually paying attention, you will notice that they are building a solid cast of youngsters with guys like Kon Knueppel, Sion James, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and their centerpiece, LaMelo Ball. Maybe they make a playoff push once they get healthy and teams stop lighting them up from three?

Luck can also run out. The Toronto Raptors are 14-7 and third in the Eastern Conference. Few people projected this level of success for them (I certainly wasn’t one of them), but they also have the sixth-lowest opponent 3-point percentage on wide-open threes and the fourth-fewest dollars lost to injuries. What happens to them if they start losing guys and opponents hit more of their uncontested shots?

The point of this all is that – whether we like it or not – luck is a part of the game, and it needs to be factored into our analysis. We can’t get too high on a team that is operating at an unsustainable level, and at the same time, we can’t give up on a team that hasn’t had any luck.

***All the data used in this article has been updated through Monday, December 1.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matissa/2025/12/02/which-teams-have-had-the-worst-luck-to-start-the-2025-26-nba-season/