Who's the Worst Player in the PBSL?

[JNR]

When you watch players in the PBSL, it’s easy to focus on the great players. Those are the ones who get the attention, who lead their team to victories, who convince you to buy shoes. The debate of who the best player in PBSL could go on forever and ever. But I’m tired of that debate. The greats get too much attention. Let’s focus on the scrubs of the PBSL. The guys who make you wonder “how are they playing in the best basketball league in the world?”

To find the worst players in the league, I collected the stats of every player who posted a PER lower than 6. PER is a flawed stat, but it does a decent job of showing production. I chose 6 because the average every year is 15, and I wanted to see the players who were well below average. Arbitrary? Maybe. If you have problems with it, make your own damn article.

Below are the players who qualify, plus their minutes per game played, total games played, and finally total minutes.

Wow, those are some stinkers. Now, I’m going to filter this further, but before we do I want to point out some things.

• Rony Seikaly must have had the three most dreadful minutes in basketball history.
• There’s only one former All-Star on the list. Poor Derek Strong.
• Including Seikaly, there are 8 players with a negative Efficiency Rating. At the time of this writing, three of those players play for the Suns.
• Of all of the players on this list, only one player started a game this year: Marcus Brown. Remember when we were asking what was wrong with the Jazz earlier this year? I think I found the answer.

Okay, that was fun, but like I said, this needs further filtering. The first thing I’m going to do is eliminate anyone who has played less than 100 minutes. I figure that even if you only play 5-10 minutes at a time, by the time you’ve accumulated 100 minutes, you’ve done more than just scratch yourself in the corner. But anyone less than that, especially someone who only played one game (Seikaly, Blount) doesn’t qualify for this dubious honor.

Eliminated: Rex Walters, Tierre Brown, Lorenzo Williams, Terry Dehere, Dontonio Wingfield, Rony Seikaly, Jamal Crawford, Jannero Pargo, Sam Mack, Corie Blount, Khalid El-Amin

The second thing I want to do is a personal preference, but I think it’s important: no rookies. Seven players on this list are first-year players, and yes, they’re all awful. Some of them, such as Scola and Welsch, play way too many minutes for as bad as they are. But it makes sense when you think about it. These are bad teams. They want to give experience to their young players. Those players are going to struggle. And I don’t think it makes sense to crown a rookie the worst player in the league. Most if not all of these guys are going to get better. So let’s disqualify the rookies and hope they score much better next year.

Eliminated: Rodney White, Jiri Welsch, Matt Barnes, Eddie Gill, Felipe Lopez, Luis Scola

So now we have a list of thirteen players. To summarize, these players have:

A) Played at least 100 minutes this season
B) Played more than one year in the league
C) Posted a Player Efficiency Rating under 6

Here are your candidates for the worst player in the league.

There are a few things to consider. Jerome Moiso has played more games than anyone else here, so he’s gotten tons of chances to play terribly. However, his rating is 6, right at the cutoff. Tyus Edney (4), DeSagana Dio (5.7), and Marcus Brown (.8) are the three other players who have played over 300 minutes and have not contributed in a meaningful way. Of this list, only Tharon Mayes has a negative PER. He only played 13 games, but nearly 10 minutes each time, which meant plenty of time to Frye everything up. And let's not forget Ruben Patterson, who pretty much everyone agrees is a waste of space (right 78?).

Many worthy contenders here. But after analyzing the candidates, I can’t get over the fact that Marcus Brown started 15 games and played nearly 20 minutes a game, and can’t even register a PER of 1! So congrats, Marcus Brown, you’re the worst player in the PBSL!

That face when you know you're about to play professionally in Lithuania

Disagree with my decision? Any other players you think are worse? Let me know in the comments!

[42PhD]

I can speak up for Mayes. He has largely been set to 0 minutes but assigned to SG. The computer put him at Center several times. I'll dig it up.

[IamQuailman]

LOL Marcus

[LoCo89]

You bastard, I was gonna cut Yinka and now his people are gonna assume its bc of this report

[IamQuailman]

AWARDED 5 POITNS (towards last years points cap)!