Five teams. Two leagues. One shared indignity. The Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz, Vancouver Canucks, and New York Rangers all finished their 2025-26 regular seasons with records worse than the underlying math says they earned. In some cases, significantly worse. The CURSD Luck Index, which measures the gap between actual results and statistical expectation, flagged all five as extreme negative outliers. These aren't just losing teams. They're teams that lost more than they should have.
The playoffs are underway, and none of these five are in them. This is their retrospective.
1. Brooklyn Nets - NBA
The Nets finished 20-62, the worst record in the Eastern Conference. Their Pythagorean win projection, based on points scored and allowed across 82 games, pegged them closer to 26 wins. That six-win gap is the largest negative variance in the NBA this season and earns Brooklyn a Luck Index of -61, the worst in world sport right now.
Six wins doesn't sound like much until you remember that each one is a game the Nets played well enough, in aggregate, to have won. Their point differential wasn't good. But it wasn't 20-win bad. Brooklyn went 4-18 in games decided by five points or fewer, a close-game record so lopsided it suggests something beyond talent deficiency. Clutch shooting, late-game execution, whatever you want to call it, the Nets simply could not finish.
They found a way to be worse than they were.
2. Washington Wizards - NBA
Washington's 17-65 record was the worst in basketball. Their Pythagorean projection of roughly 23 wins means the Wizards underperformed expectation by six games as well, landing them a Luck Index of -56. They were historically bad, yes. But their numbers suggest they should have been merely very bad.
The Wizards lost 11 games by three points or fewer. They won three. That 3-11 mark in the tightest contests is a coin-flip disaster stretched across an entire season. Regression to the mean in those situations alone would have been worth several wins.
3. Vancouver Canucks - NHL
Vancouver posted a 25-49 record in a league where .500 hockey is the baseline expectation. Their Pythagorean estimate of 26 wins represents only a one-win gap, but the Luck Index of -52 accounts for goal-timing variance and the Canucks' brutal record in one-goal games, where they went 8-21.
That 8-21 mark is the real curse. League average in one-goal games tends to hover near .500 over time. Vancouver's shooting percentage in the third period of close games cratered to levels that suggest variance far more than inability. A team can be bad. Going 8-21 in coin-flip games requires something extra.
4. Utah Jazz - NBA
The Jazz went 22-60, six wins fewer than their Pythagorean projection of approximately 28. A Luck Index of -49 rounds out a miserable season in Salt Lake City. Utah's net rating was poor but not catastrophic, sitting closer to the mid-lottery range than the basement.
Utah lost 14 games in which they led by double digits at some point. Fourteen. That is not a roster problem. That is a closing problem, or a variance problem, or both. The Jazz were competitive more often than their record will ever suggest, which is the particular cruelty of this kind of season.
5. New York Rangers - NHL
The Rangers finished 34-39, missing the playoffs by a margin that stings more when you see their Pythagorean projection of 39 wins. Five wins of negative variance gave them a Luck Index of -48 and, quite possibly, cost them a postseason berth.
New York's expected goals model painted a picture of a team that deserved better territorial results than it got. Their 5-on-5 expected goal share hovered around 52 percent for most of the season, a number that typically correlates with playoff teams. Their save percentage at even strength told a different, uglier story.
Sometimes the math just doesn't arrive on time.
The Common Thread
All five teams share one structural problem: they lost close games at rates that deviate sharply from expectation. Whether it was one-goal NHL losses or NBA contests decided by a possession, the pattern is consistent. Finishing variance, not talent, is the shared curse. Pythagorean models don't care about clutch. They care about aggregate production. And in aggregate, every one of these teams produced more than their records reflect. The losses were real. The margins were not.
