Five teams. Three countries. Two sports. One shared indignity: the numbers say they should be better than this. Pisa, Athletic Club, Hellas Verona, the Brooklyn Nets, and Wolverhampton Wanderers have each endured seasons in which the scoreboard has been substantially crueler than the underlying process. Their combined Luck Index deficit is -329. The gap between what they earned on paper and what they collected in reality is, by any cross-sport standard, extreme.
1. Pisa - Serie A
Pisa's expected points total this season is 40.2. They have 18. That 22.2-point deficit translates to a Luck Index of -86, the worst figure in any of Europe's top leagues and, as far as our model reaches, the worst in professional team sport right now.
A record of 2 wins, 12 draws, and 23 losses looks like a team that simply cannot compete. But the shot-based model tells a different story, one in which Pisa were a mid-table side creating and conceding chances at a rate consistent with roughly 40 points. That would have them comfortably clear of the relegation places rather than buried in them.
Twelve draws suggests a team that keeps getting to the right neighborhood and then locks itself out of the house. Converting even a quarter of those into wins would have rewritten their entire season.
2. Athletic Club - La Liga
Athletic sit on 45 points from 37 matches. Their expected points figure is 56.8, a gap of 11.8 that the Luck Index inflates to -66 once strength of schedule is factored in.
This is not a bad team by any reasonable definition. Thirteen wins in La Liga is a credible total. But 18 losses alongside them is jarring, the profile of a side that wins decisively or loses narrowly, with little middle ground. Six draws from 37 games is abnormally low, suggesting Athletic have been on the wrong end of late goals, tight margins, and the kind of coin-flip moments that typically balance out over a season.
They didn't balance out.
3. Hellas Verona - Serie A
Verona's 21 points from 37 games make them look like one of the weakest sides in Serie A. Their expected points total of 42.8 makes them look like a team that should be safe.
The gap of 21.8 points is nearly identical to Pisa's and, like Pisa, the damage is concentrated in an absurd draws-to-losses conversion rate. Three wins and 12 draws from 37 matches means Verona found a way to lose 22 games while consistently generating enough to deserve better. Their Luck Index of -60 reflects a season-long pattern of underperformance in the box that no coaching change or tactical tweak could easily explain.
4. Brooklyn Nets - NBA
The Nets finished 20-62, a record that will define their offseason positioning. Pythagorean expectation, based on points scored and allowed across 82 games, projected roughly 26 wins. Six wins may not sound like much, but it is the difference between historically bad and merely bad.
Brooklyn's Luck Index of -60 was driven by an inability to close tight games. In contests decided by five points or fewer, the Nets were on the wrong side far more often than randomness would predict. Talent matters, and this was not a talented roster. But the margin between their actual record and their underlying performance suggests the basketball gods took what was already a difficult year and made it meaningfully worse.
5. Wolves - Premier League
Wolves have 19 points from 37 Premier League matches. Expected points models give them 37.2, an 18.2-point shortfall that produces a Luck Index of -57.
Three wins, ten draws, and 24 losses is a brutal line. But like Pisa and Verona above them on this list, the draw count hints at a team that was competitive far more often than the final table will ever reflect. Wolves created enough to survive. They simply could not convert enough of the right moments.
The thread connecting all five is finishing variance, the persistent, season-long failure to convert expected output into actual results. These are not five teams undone by bad schedules or catastrophic injuries alone. They are teams whose processes were meaningfully better than their outcomes. The math noticed, even if the table didn't.
