This decade has seen a lot of worthless teams stumble and fumble their way out of our hearts and into our toilets, and so coming up with the ten most worthless teams of the decade was not an easy task. Most of the teams on this list are teams that are desolate wastes of a franchise, teams that make their fans want to weep and sit in the garage with the car running. There have been some worse individual seasons by teams, but those have usually come in rebuilding years or during the early days of an expansion franchise. This list is reserved for the worst of the worst, those terrible teams that suck the life out of everyone who has the misfortune of calling themselves their fans. Happy Holidays!
10. 2006 Oakland Raiders - We'll start in Oakland, where the Raiders bottomed out in 2006 with a 2-14 record after seeing what had been a Super Bowl team fall apart in the preceding years. Gone was Jon Gruden, the architect behind the team's aforementioned success, Rich Gannon, the MVP quarterback, and really anyone who had anything to do with the team being any good. Instead, all that was left was 150 year old vampire Al Davis and such luminaries as quarterbacks Andrew Walter and Aaron Brooks. Usually, when a team is this bad they earn the right to select the best player in the upcoming draft, and the Raiders were no exception. Unfortunately, they selected quarterback Jamarcus Russell, cementing their position at the bottom of the league for years to come.
9. 2001 Pittsburgh Pirates - The Pirates have never quite had as apocalyptic a season as some other teams on this list, but frankly that's the only thing keeping them from the top. There might not be a franchise that has been as consistently worthless this decade than these dudes. Their best season saw them finish a lowly 75-87. So, really, this is a pick that encompasses an entire decade of outright failure. The worst season during this Bataan Death March was the 2001 campaign, which saw the team finish 62-100. Behind a pitching staff led by the immortal Todd Ritchie, the Pirates had no chance at respectability. Unfortunately for their fans, this was just the midway point on an epic 17 year journey of utter futility.
8. 2009 Washington Nationals - The Washington Nationals are the former Washington Expos, a franchise so worthless that even Canadians refused to support them, and from what I understand those dudes spend all their free time living in igloos and clubbing seals. Unfortunately, after being saved - or exiled depending on your point of view - to Washington D.C., the newly named Nationals continued to act as fan repellent, finally bottoming out just this past season at 59-103. At the All-Star break, their record was an absurdly terrible 26-61, meaning they had to actually get better just to finish with as lousy a record as they did.
7. 2000-'01 New York Islanders - The poor Islanders were once upon a time the darlings of the NHL, back when Reagan was president and Michael Jackson was still a human being. But by the time this decade rolled around, they found themselves as the third team in the New York market, behind the Rangers and the New Jersey Devils. The ugly stepchild of the New York hockey world, the Islanders completely crapped out during the 2000-'01 season, finishing with a paltry 52 points. Led in scoring by the legendary Mariusz Czerkawski, this was the low point for the franchise and they would see modest improvement over the course of the decade. Unfortunately for them, modest improvement still meant utter irrelevance.
6. 2005 Kansas City Royals - The Kansas City Royals have, throughout the decade, been the American League's answer to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Unlike the Pirates, however, the Royals have managed to lose 100 games or more four different times. The worst of these terrible seasons was the 2005 campaign, which saw them stumble along as dysfunctional and useless as the actual royal family en route to a 56-106 record. Their top pitcher on the season was Zach Greinke, and he finished with a final record of 5-17 before disappearing prior to the next season with an anxiety disorder and severe depression. Needless to say, it wasn't a very good time to be a fan of the Royals.
5. 1999-2000 Los Angeles Clippers - The Clippers are synonymous with failure, and their low point for the decade came during the 1999-'00 season. Now I know that technically the first half of the season didn't fall within the confines of this decade, but the second half did and so in the immortal words of Mills Lane, I'll allow it. Sadly, their fans probably wish I wouldn't because now they will be forced to relive the agony of a 15-67 season with such stars as Maurice Taylor and Derek Anderson leading the charge into the toilet. Then again, it is the Clippers, and there is the strong possibility that there are no fans left to relive that agony.
4. 2004-'05 Atlanta Hawks - The Hawks have mostly stumbled around aimlessly this decade, and while they have fought their way back to at least a semblance of respectability the past couple of seasons, the stench of the 2004-'05 season, when they finished 13-69, still hovers over the franchise. Led by a washed up, ball hogging Antoine Walker, the '04-'05 Hawks officially go down as the NBA's worst team of the decade. Congratulations.
3. 1999-'00 Atlanta Thrashers - For the most part, I have ignored the rancid efforts of expansion teams, because really, they are expected to be terrible. But it's not like the Thrashers have done anything the rest of the decade to indicate that radical improvement is on the way. Indeed, the Thrashers might be the most pointless franchise in sports, a hockey team in a southern city that doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to fan support. Incredibly, the baby Thrashers finished with a terrible 39 points in the 1999-'00 season, a low point not only for the franchise, but for the entire NHL during the decade.
2. 2003 Detroit Tigers - The Tigers are the only franchise on this list that have gone to a championship game or series during this decade. That doesn't erase the astoundingly awful effort of the 2003 edition though. With a mind numbing final record of 43-119, the Tigers narrowly avoided going down as the worst baseball team of all time. I would say that merits inclusion on this list. It's only a testament to the utter putrescence of the team ahead of them on this list that the Tigers didn't finish first.
1. 2008 Detroit Lions - 0-16. That should be all I have to write. Case closed. Yes, it was an awful and trying season for Lions fans, a historically awful season that was the nadir of a ridiculously inept decade that served as arguably the worst ten year stretch in the history of sports. There is little point in putting forward any argument against the Lions being number one on this list, and so I will just say it again: 0-16.
