Five teams. Two leagues. One shared indignity. The Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards, Memphis Grizzlies, Vancouver Canucks, and New York Rangers all finished their 2025-26 seasons with records meaningfully worse than the underlying math says they earned. Pythagorean expectation models, which estimate wins from points scored and allowed, flagged each of these clubs as significant negative outliers. At CURSD, we track these gaps weekly through our Luck Index, and as the NBA and NHL seasons close their books, these five sit at the bottom of the ledger. Not because they were good. Because they were worse than they should have been, and the distinction matters.
1. Brooklyn Nets - NBA
The Nets posted a 20-62 record, the worst in the Eastern Conference. Their Luck Index of -59 is the lowest in our cross-sport tracker. A Pythagorean model built on their season-long point differential projects roughly 26 wins, meaning Brooklyn left six wins on the table through some combination of close-game variance and late-game collapse.
Six wins wouldn't have saved their season. It wouldn't have changed the draft lottery math in any dramatic way. But it would have placed them closer to teams that, by the eye test, looked no better. Brooklyn's point differential was poor, not historic. Their record was.
The Nets went 5-19 in games decided by five points or fewer. That close-game conversion rate, around 21%, is the kind of number that almost always regresses toward 50% given enough time. Brooklyn simply ran out of games before the coin started flipping back.
2. Washington Wizards - NBA
Washington's 17-65 finish carries its own gravity, but their Pythagorean projection of approximately 23 wins means the Wizards underperformed their already bleak underlying numbers by six games. Their Luck Index of -53 lands them second on this list.
The Wizards were outscored by 9.2 points per game on the season. That's bad. But a team outscored by 9.2 per game doesn't typically win only 17. Washington's expected goals luck, or in basketball terms their expected margin-to-win conversion, broke against them repeatedly in the second half of the season, when they went 4-27 after the All-Star break.
Sometimes a team is both genuinely bad and genuinely unlucky. The Wizards managed both.
3. Vancouver Canucks - NHL
Vancouver's 25-49-8 season ended well before the playoffs began, but the Canucks' Luck Index of -52 tells a story their record obscures. Pythagorean models based on goals for and goals against project closer to 26 wins, a modest gap, but the Canucks also lost 14 one-goal games against just 7 wins in those situations.
That 7-14 mark in one-goal contests is where the variance lives. NHL analysts have long understood that one-goal games are roughly coin flips over time. Vancouver's coin landed tails twice as often as heads.
4. Memphis Grizzlies - NBA
Memphis went 25-57, but a Pythagorean expectation of around 30 wins makes them a five-game negative outlier. Their Luck Index sits at -50. The Grizzlies were battered by injuries again this season, and the roster that actually played most minutes posted a point differential more consistent with a 30-win pace.
The gap between 25 and 30 wins is, in draft positioning terms, significant. Memphis finished with the third-worst record in the league. At 30 wins, they'd have been seventh-worst. Luck, in this case, may have bought them a better pick.
Silver linings are still linings.
5. New York Rangers - NHL
The Rangers' 34-39-9 record kept them out of the playoffs by a comfortable margin, but their Pythagorean projection of roughly 39 wins would have placed them in the wild card conversation. A Luck Index of -47 rounds out our list. New York's goal differential suggested a team hovering around .500, not one clearly below it.
The Rangers allowed the seventh-fewest goals in the Eastern Conference but converted that defensive effort into the 13th-best record. Their save percentage at even strength sat above league average, yet their record in games where they allowed two or fewer goals was just 20-10, a win rate lower than expected for a team that stingy.
The Common Thread
All five teams lost close games at rates well below what probability expects. This is the through-line, not talent, not coaching, not schedule strength. Finishing variance, the ability or inability to convert narrow margins into wins, is the single most unstable element in team sports. These five clubs landed on the wrong side of it. Whether next season's math corrects the balance is an open question. The models, at least, say it should.
