One quick caveat: This is only accounting for team’s seasons since 1984. There’s technically worse teams that have made the postseason in the NBA, NBL, ABA and BAA but to keep this as simple as possible, post-ABA/NBA-merger, ¹⁹⁸³⁄₈₄ was the year when the 8 seed format was introduced, hence it being the cutoff.

Amusingly, this cutoff year sees one of the worst teams to ever make the playoffs in the ¹⁹⁸³⁄₈₄ Washington Bullets (Now the Wizards with a significantly less cool logo) who cracked the 8 seed with a record of 35-47. That’s good enough (Bad?) to tie for 3rd worst win percentage for a playoff team with two other teams (It’s the ⁸⁵⁄₈₆ Spurs and ⁹⁴⁄₉₅ Celtics). In case you’re wondering, the worst team to ever make the playoffs was the ¹⁹⁸⁵⁄₈₆ Chicago Bulls aka Jordan’s sophomore season when he played only 18 games. They had a record of 30-52.

There’s around 50 teams to make the postseason with a losing record, with the most recent team to do so being the 10 seed Miami Heat in 2025 - albeit they did so via the Play-In Tournament and wouldn’t have made it through previous means. That Heat team has the magic number: 37-45. The same record as the ²⁰²⁵⁄₂₆ Golden State Warriors and ties them with four other teams who made the postseason for the eleventh worst regular season record to ever make the playoffs.

Oh and in case you’re thinking about a 1st round upset of truly hilarious proportions against the Thunder: Of the 50-ish teams who’ve made the playoffs with a losing record from 1984 onward, only one of them has ever won a playoff series. That would be the 7th seed ¹⁹⁸⁶⁄₈₇ Seattle Supersonics; they went 39-43 and beat not only the 1 seeded Dallas Mavericks but the Houston Rockets in 4 and 6 games respectively. Keep in mind the 1st round during this time was a “best of 5” format so it wasn’t a sweep like what happened to the Sonics when they faced the eventual champion Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, thus preventing us from getting the first ever 7 seed in the NBA Finals.