It was bad, but just how bad?
The Indiana Pacers mercifully concluded their 2025-26 season this past weekend. The Pacers staggered across the finish line with a 19-63 record – the franchise’s worst record ever.
It was the most unsuccessful season in Indiana history by almost any measure. But how did the nightmare year stack up against the very worst seasons in NBA history?
The answer: By most measures, it was one of the 100 worst seasons of all-time.
By the numbers
Indiana is the 15th team ever to finish with a 19-63 record. The .232 winning percentage is tied for 67th-worst in NBA history.
Average point differential is arguably an even better way to measure a team’s strength. Basketball-Reference.com publishes a “Simple Rating System,” or “SRS,” value. SRS measures average point differential adjusted for strength of schedule. The Pacers finished the 2025-26 season with an SRS rating of -7.64. That’s the 95th-worst SRS rating of all time.
Exactly 107 teams have “accomplished” a winning percentage worse than .232 or an SRS rating worse than -7.64. Fifty-three teams “accomplished” both. Therefore, it’s fair to say the 2025-26 Pacers were somewhere between the 54th-worst and 108th-worst team in NBA history.
There have been 1,723 total teams in NBA history. Thus, Indiana’s 2025-26 season ranks somewhere in the 94th to 97th percentile of the NBA’s worst seasons.
A case for optimism
The glass-not-totally-empty arguments:
The Pacers weren’t close to being the worst team in the NBA this season. The Washington Wizards finished with both a worse record (17-65) and a worse SRS (-11.62, the sixth-worst SRS of all time). By the standards above, the Wizards logged one of the 40 worst seasons in NBA history.
Three other teams finished with a worse SRS than Indiana this past season – the Brooklyn Nets (-9.70), Sacramento Kings (-9.58), and Utah Jazz (-8.05). You could make a case that the Pacers were actually no worse than the 26th-best team in the league this season. A team with Indiana’s statistical profile typically would win 23 games. The Pacers were – no surprise in this snake-bitten season – unlucky to win only 19 games.
The final analysis
In addition to the worst record in franchise history, the 2025-26 Pacers re-wrote the following sections of the franchise record book:
· Fewest home wins. Indiana finished with 11. The previous low was 13 by the 2020-21 team in a 72-game season.
· Biggest drop-off in wins. The Pacers won 31 fewer games than they did in 2024-25. The previous biggest drop-off was (depending on your view of how to count shortened seasons) either an 18-win drop-off between the 2013-14 and 2014-25 seasons, or a 25-win decrease from the 1997-98 season to the lockout-shortened 1998-99 campaign.
· Point differential. Indiana was outscored by -8.0 points per game. The previous mark was a differential of -6.2 points per game in 1984-85.
· Most points allowed. It came down to the final game, but the Pacers finished the season allowing 120.4 points per game. That’s a fraction worse than the 120.2 points allowed by the 2023-24 squad (that nonetheless reached the Eastern Conference Finals).
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