Ranking The NBA’s Top 3 Worst Teammates Over The Past 30 Years

In NBA fandom, we love to celebrate winners. Champions, MVPs, All-Stars are generally the canonical fodder we pundits prefer to unpack. The best players and teams in the league thrive with a collective cooperation, working in tandem to unlock a greatness no one can reach on their own.

But there are other kinds of colleagues littering the history of the NBA. Folks who despise working together, and are averse to cooperation. Granted, on occasion there are dysfunctional championship clubs, where a few pieces of the puzzle maybe don’t see eye-to-eye beyond the hardwood. Okay, fine, there’s actually a fairly good amount of those.

What about the teams that win nothing? What about the teammates who prove to be actively destructive towards one another, colleagues who tear each other down, make each other worse, bring out the worst impulses in themselves and their affiliates to screw the whole kitten kaboodle up for everyone? Today, we’d like to unpack three worst colleagues in recent league memory. Because darn it, someone needs to.

3. Latrell Sprewell

Sprewell, a four-time All-Star swingman while with the Golden State Warriors and New York Knicks, is far more remembered today for a myriad of incidents off the court. He infamously choked then-Warriors head coach P.J. Carlesimo during a 1997 practice after being criticized for his passing acumen (well, his lack thereof), before teammates and coaches had to pull him off. He was suspended for a then-record 68 contests and his contract with the club was voided. During that suspension, he hurt two people during a reckless driving incident. He threatened colleagues with weapons and two-by-fours. Towards the end of his career, he rejected significant overtures, opting instead to retire. He’s gotten into fights with teammates and, allegedly, partners. This was not a guy with whom you won anything, talented as he was.

2. Gilbert Arenas

Yes, the three-time All-Star and The Artist Formerly Known As Agent Zero may be a beloved podcaster now, but he managed to flame out from his Washington Wizards tenure in perhaps the most spectacular way possible, and yes we’re including the Malice At The Palace Pacers. Across his three All-Star seasons with the Wiz, the 6’4″ scoring point guard averaged 27.7 points on .432/.361/.826 shooting splits, 5.7 dimes (against 3.3 turnovers), 3.4 rebounds, and 1.9 steals across an average of 78 contests per bout. Injuries cost him most of the succeeding two seasons with the Wiz, but things finally collapsed for good on Christmas Eve, 2009. A gambling dispute led Arenas and Wizards combo guard Javaris Crittenton to draw guns on each other in the team locker room, an incident that led first to an indefinite league suspension, a 30-day stay at a halfway house and two years of probation, effectively murdering the club’s 2009-10 season chances. Arenas returned to start the 2010-11 season, but was flipped two months into the year.

1. Javaris Crittenton

Crittenton, a Third-Team All-ACC honoree at Georgia Tech, was selected with No. 19 pick in 2007 by the Los Angeles Lakers, but was quickly flipped as a throw-in piece for LA’s infamous trade that landed the club Pau Gasol. The trouble started during his second season, when he was flipped from Memphis to Washington. One year later, he and Arenas got into it. Arenas actually received the harsher punishment legally speaking. Crittenton received just one year of probation on a charge of misdemeanor gun possession but was suspended for the rest of the year. Arenas, being a recent All-Star, got to stick around, but Crittenton was cut after being suspended. He never played in the NBA again, instead enjoying minor stints with the Zhejiang Guangsha Lions (he left after playing just five games) and the Dakota Wizards.

But Crittenton is our No. 1 for another reason. He was released in April of last year after serving a 10-year prison sentence for voluntary manslaughter (reduced from murder charges). While out on bond, he was arrested for selling oodles of illicit substances. Point being, this is not someone with whom you would ever want to be in the trenches during a playoff series. It’s perhaps no coincidence that he didn’t even last into the spring on any team that qualified for the playoffs. The manslaughter stuff is ultimately what puts him over the top as our ultimate bad teammate.