The Longest Losing Streaks in NBA History
The longest losing streak in NBA history is 28 games, and two teams share it. The 2023-24 Detroit Pistons lost 28 straight inside a single season, from October 30 to December 30, 2023. The Philadelphia 76ers lost 28 straight across two seasons, from March 27, 2015 to December 1, 2015.
That number is the losing mirror of the record this site is built around, and it falls short. The 1971-72 Lakers’ 33-game winning streak is still five games longer than anything anyone has managed in the other direction, more than fifty years later.
Every losing streak of 20 games or more
| Games | Team | Season(s) | Dates | Streak ended by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 | Detroit Pistons | 2023-24 | Oct 30 – Dec 30, 2023 | 129-127 over Toronto |
| 28 | Philadelphia 76ers | 2014-15 / 2015-16 | Mar 27 – Dec 1, 2015 | 103-91 over the Lakers |
| 26 | Cleveland Cavaliers | 2010-11 | Dec 20, 2010 – Feb 11, 2011 | 126-119 (OT) over the Clippers |
| 26 | Philadelphia 76ers | 2013-14 | Jan 31 – Mar 29, 2014 | 123-98 over Detroit |
| 24 | Cleveland Cavaliers | 1981-82 / 1982-83 | Mar 19 – Nov 10, 1982 | 132-120 over Golden State |
| 23 | Vancouver Grizzlies | 1995-96 | Feb 16 – Apr 3, 1996 | 105-103 over Minnesota |
| 23 | Denver Nuggets | 1997-98 | Dec 9, 1997 – Jan 24, 1998 | 99-81 over the Clippers |
| 23 | Charlotte Bobcats | 2011-12 | Mar 19 – Nov 2, 2012 | 90-89 over Indiana |
| 21 | Detroit Pistons | 1979-80 / 1980-81 | Mar 7 – Oct 25, 1980 | 112-109 over Houston |
| 20 | Philadelphia 76ers | 1972-73 | Jan 9 – Feb 14, 1973 | 106-104 over Milwaukee |
Five of the ten span two seasons. That is the structural quirk of the record: a team collapsing in March keeps the streak alive through a summer, a draft, free agency and a training camp, and then resumes it in October against an entirely different opponent set.
The 2023-24 Pistons: 28 inside one season
Detroit opened the season 2-1 and then did not win again for two months. The streak ran from an October 30 loss to Oklahoma City through December 30, when the Pistons beat Toronto 129-127. Along the way they passed the 26-game single-season mark that had stood since 2011 and matched the overall record of 28.
They finished 14-68, the league’s worst record that year but nowhere near the all-time bottom. That is the recurring lesson of this list — a record streak and a record season are not the same thing.
The 76ers: 28 across the summer
Philadelphia’s version is the longer story. The 2014-15 team lost its final 10 games. The 2015-16 team then lost its first 18, tying the record for the worst start to an NBA season. The streak finally broke on December 1, 2015, with a 103-91 win over a Lakers team in Kobe Bryant’s final visit to Philadelphia.
Those 18 opening losses are also why the 2015-16 76ers finished 10-72, the second-most losses in league history behind the 9-73 mark covered in our breakdown of the worst record in NBA history.
What actually ends a streak
Look at the final column of the table. Five of the ten streak-breaking wins came by three points or fewer, including a 90-89 and a 105-103. One went to overtime.
That pattern is not sentimental. A team on a 25-game skid is not suddenly transformed; it wins the way a team of its quality wins, which is narrowly and against opposition that is either mediocre, tired or resting people. Charlotte broke its 23-game streak by one point. Vancouver broke its by two.
The blowouts happen too. Philadelphia ended its 26-game streak in 2014 by beating Detroit 123-98, a 25-point win. But the narrow result against a beatable opponent is the typical case, which tells you these streaks are less a collapse in ability than a stretch of schedule where a bad team’s ordinary chance of losing kept coming up.
Losing streaks versus winning streaks
| Longest losing | Longest winning | |
|---|---|---|
| Games | 28 | 33 |
| Team | 2023-24 Pistons / 2014-15-16 76ers | 1971-72 Lakers |
| Set in | 2023 and 2015 | 1971-72 |
| Times broken since 2000 | Three | Never |
The asymmetry runs the opposite way from what most people guess. The bad-team record has been rewritten repeatedly in the modern era — 26 in 2011, 26 again in 2014, 28 in 2015, 28 in 2023 — while the good-team record has not moved since Richard Nixon’s first term.
The reason is that the bottom of the league has become easier to reach on purpose. Teams tear rosters down deliberately, and a team constructed to lose games in February can construct a 25-game streak. Nobody constructs a 33-game winning streak; that requires a top-two roster to also stay healthy and get every bounce for two and a half months, and the modern league’s load management and depth of quality make it harder rather than easier.
The full math on why the top end is so much more resistant is in our piece on the real odds of going 82-0.
The number that has never been reached
Eighty-two. No team has lost every game in a season, and the closest anyone has come is a 28-game streak inside a schedule nearly three times that long. We ran the numbers on whether 0-82 is possible — the short version is that even a roster as bad as the worst in league history would need a run of luck roughly as improbable as the perfect season this site is named for.
Draft a lineup and play out a season if you want to find out which end of the streak table you’d land on.
Frequently asked questions
Does a streak that spans two seasons count as the record?+
Reference sites list both, ranked together. The 2023-24 Pistons and the 2014-15/2015-16 76ers both reached 28, but Detroit's came inside a single season while Philadelphia's was 10 losses at the end of one year plus 18 at the start of the next. When a tiebreaker is applied, the single-season version is usually given precedence.
What is the longest losing streak to open a season?+
Eighteen games, shared by the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets and the 2015-16 Philadelphia 76ers. The Nets finished 12-70 and the 76ers 10-72. Philadelphia's 18 were the back half of the 28-game streak that had started the previous March.
Do long losing streaks predict a bad final record?+
Less reliably than you would expect. The 2010-11 Cavaliers and 2013-14 76ers each lost 26 straight and still finished 19-63, better than several teams that never lost more than 12 in a row. A streak concentrates losses; it does not create extra ones.
Has any good team gone on a long losing streak?+
Not at this length. Every streak of 20 or more belongs to a team that finished with fewer than 20 wins, with the exceptions of the 19-63 Cavaliers and 19-63 76ers. Streaks of this size require both a weak roster and something compounding it — injuries, a coaching change, or a roster teardown mid-season.
Why do NBA losing streaks run longer than NFL or MLB ones?+
Volume and predictability. The NBA plays 82 games with far less game-to-game randomness than baseball or football, so a genuinely outmatched team stays outmatched night after night. The same property is what lets the best teams put together 20- and 30-game winning runs, which almost never happen in the other leagues.