The greatest NBA players ever on very, very bad teams

In basketball, with just five players on the floor at a time per squad, one star can really carry a team to a higher level.

Prime example: In the mid-2000s, Kobe Bryant dragged the Los Angeles Lakers, whose third-leading scorer was usually Smush Parker or Luke Walton, to multiple playoff appearances after Shaquille O’Neal left and before Pau Gasol arrived.

As such, it’s a very difficult exercise to find elite NBA player seasons on very, very bad teams, which we – for this article – defined as campaigns in which the team won fewer than 25 percent of its games. Almost always, if an NBA player is having an elite season, their team will win more than 25 percent of its contests.

Regardless, the season rookie Victor Wembanyama is having got us thinking: What are some of the best NBA seasons put up by players on real lousy squads?

Find out what we determined below.