When the NBA reformed the draft lottery, it did so with the hopes that all 30 teams would be somewhat competitive. But two weeks into the 2026-27 season, that isn't proving true. Five teams have just a single win so far this season, and in many cases, those wins are only coming when they play one another.
The Los Angeles Clippers have only beaten the Sacramento Kings. The Chicago Bulls have only beaten the Milwaukee Bucks. The Kings' only win came when the Dallas Mavericks rested Kyrie Irving.
No matter how the incentive structures are designed, the NBA will always have a handful of very bad teams. Some teams are poorly run. Some teams are besieged by injuries.
Some teams are simply in transitional stages of their roster builds. The old NBA was designed to make bad teams good quickly. The new one is designed to make it harder for teams to bounce back from the bottom.
As part of last spring's lottery reform, the three worst teams in the league are now punished for losing. In the new 3-2-1 lottery format, the seven best teams to miss the Play-In Tournament get three lottery balls each out of the 37 available ones, while the three worst teams each get only two. In theory, that should create an all-out war to avoid the bottom three.
In practice, well, we'll get into that shortly. For now, as the bottom of the league is starting to take shape, let's take a look at our relegation zone candidates. While injuries could certainly create more of them as we go, seven teams stand out as reasonable threats for a bottom-three record so far this season.
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