‘The food is bad, everything is bad’: what it feels like to be on a hopeless NBA team

The business of sports is about winning. But that, of course, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of losers out there. That’s most evident every year in the NBA around the first day of spring. With about a dozen games left in the regular season, it’s obvious which teams are also-rans – and they have probably known that for some time. But when a team are losing and losing often, how does that affect the roster? How do the players deal with the constant lows?

“When you lose,” says former NBA All-Star Xavier McDaniel, “it’s like getting a life sentence. I knew for me, losing, it started me to drink beer. Losing created a lot of bad habits. Losing can be a disease. We were losing so much [my rookie season] that by January I was drinking beer!”

Growing up, McDaniel was seemingly destined for the pros. Tall, tough and talented, the X-Man led his high school and college teams to victory after victory. In the 1985 draft, he was picked No 4 overall by the Seattle SuperSonics. When you’re a top selection like that, you’re often entering a lowly team. That was the case for McDaniel. His rookie season, the Sonics finished 31-51. They improved in his sophomore season and for most of his career in the league, McDaniel was on winners. But there were a few seasons later in Boston and New Jersey when times were equally as tough.

“I would say [you can tell a losing season is unfolding] when you get about 30 games in and you’re struggling,” he says. “You see you’re going nowhere fast. For me, [losing] feels like shit. When you’re losing, everything is bad. The food is bad, everything is bad.”

If you’re young and on a bad team, you can hope that the roster will get reinforcements via the draft in the coming summers. But if you’re a vet on a loser, you may as well start packing your bags. Bad teams want to showcase the young guys and deal the vets. Or it could be a case that the temperaments on the team just don’t mix. “One thing about the NBA,” says McDaniel, “you’ve got to find guys who play well together.”

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When he started his career, Scott Williams barely knew what it was like to lose. In his first three seasons, the undrafted player out of the University of North Carolina won three titles with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. But in subsequent years, he found himself languishing on bad Philadelphia teams. Those squads, he says, didn’t care about the idea of the team. That was their downfall.

“A lot of times,” says Williams, “I’ve found that it’s [about the] character of the makeup of the team. In basketball, really only about eight dudes determine the success or failure of the season. And if you got one or two or three dudes on a team that don’t have the [right] character, you’re going to have a losing year.”

In the NBA, Williams says, everyone is talented. So it is often attitude that separates winners from losers. “If your star doesn’t have good character, if he doesn’t want to put in work, the preparation, the consistence,” says Williams, “if he doesn’t have resiliency, you’re going to struggle.”

Williams remembers his days with Jordan. “There was nobody that had more intensity and stronger will and a passion to work than Michael Jordan,” says Williams. “Everyone has to come along if the superstar is doing it.”

Williams played on 60-plus-win teams and teams that have won games in the teens. There is no greater high in his life, he says, with perhaps the exception of the birth of his children, than winning an NBA title. It’s the culmination of so much work, time and sacrifice. But the opposite is true when you’re on a team going nowhere. Such was the case when he was in Philly on squads helmed by a young Allen Iverson.

“When you’re in a losing season – man, you can’t wait for the freaking year to end,” Williams says. “You’re showing up every day with dudes with negative attitudes who are me-first people. It’s miserable to be around them. You count the days until your contract is finished so you can get out of there.” It’s hard to stay motivated, he says. “It weighs on you. To fight that defeatist mentalist is hard – especially in your 20s when you haven’t had as many life lessons.”

What’s worse, when you’re on a losing team with players who don’t care about improvement, Williams says, it can make you question your own effort. “Why would I want to risk diving for a ball and banging my knee when we’re down 15 when the dude next to you won’t even help you up off the floor after you do it?” he says. “But there’s certain things you have to fight through and realize there’s a bigger picture.”

In 1981, Cedric Maxwell was named the NBA finals MVP. Surrounded by guys like Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Tiny Archibald, it was Maxwell who won the hardware when his Boston Celtics beat the Houston Rockets. The win, though, came after several years of rebuilding, including the first two years of Maxwell’s career when the Celtics went 32-50 and 29-53. Boston were in the middle of an overhaul, despite playing in the Eastern Conference finals in 1977. Injuries and ageing players plagued the roster. So, in the hopes of turning things around, Celtics coach Tom Heinsohn looked to his rookie.

The team had lost six games in a row to start Maxwell’s rookie campaign. But he got in and played 30-plus minutes in a game on 11 November against Buffalo. He scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds. “I came in that game and played really well,” says Maxwell. “And I remember [veteran Celtic] John Havlicek came up to me and said, ‘Hey, rook, just keep it going!’” But despite his good play, the Celtics never flipped the script that year. “The [vets] were convinced we’d turn the thing around, like, ‘We’re going to get on a streak!’ But we never did.”

All the losing led Maxwell to feel down, he says. But that’s when the team’s veteran big man offered his own bit of philosophy. “I remember Curtis Rowe saying to me after I felt depressed about one game – Curtis said to me, ‘Rook, there ain’t no Ls or Ws on them checks.”

But while some guys don’t live and die with the results, for Maxwell, winning is everything. “I’ve always been a competitor,” he says. So, he did what he could: he focused on himself and his own self-improvement. He focused on what he could control. “I was going to find a way to make myself better,” he says. He watched his teammates and their bad habits. He made sure that he didn’t follow in their footsteps.

“During the late 1970s, drugs were big in the NBA,” Maxwell says. “I was asked multiple times did I want to get some coke or do some blow. But I had a strong enough constitution to know that wasn’t something I wanted. Those bad habits, those things I was able to avoid.”

Looking back, Maxwell can sum up his position on losing with one piece of advice. Don’t let the noise and negativity affect your game or the way you look at the world. Because right around the corner could be an upswing, the playoffs, a chance at a title.

“The best thing,” says Maxwell, “is to be your own person. As my mom and dad used to say, ‘Be a leader. Don’t be a follower.’ That was something that helped me out in what I wanted to do. So, to any rookie out there, just be true to yourself.”