page_title: History of the Philadelphia 76ers
section_title: 1967–1976: Fall of the 76ers
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Philadelphia 76ers / 1967–1976: Fall of the 76ers
caption_attribution_description: English: YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan -- Joe "Jellybean" Bryant, father of Kobe Bryant and coach of the Tokyo Apache basketball team, takes time to sign autographs and talk to fans after the game Feb. 7 at the Samurai Fitness Center. Bryant also played during the last half of the game. Tokyo Apache, a Japanese professional basketball team, took on the Yokota Warriors varsity team here and walked away with the win, 96 - 74, while approximately 200 Yokota members looked on. (U.S. Air Force photo by Mark Allen)
context_page_description: The Philadelphia 76ers are an American basketball team currently playing in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association. The 76ers are third in NBA history in wins and playoff appearances.
context_section_description: In the 1967–68 season, with a new home court in the form of The Spectrum to defend their championship, the 76ers had the NBA's best record for the third consecutive season.  Chamberlain won his third consecutive MVP award after leading the NBA in rebounds, assists, and field goal percentage.  Greer and Chamberlain both averaged over 24 points per game, and once again the 76ers made it back to the NBA Playoffs.  In a rematch of the previous year's semifinals, the 76ers held a 3–1 series lead over the Celtics, before the Celtics staged a dramatic comeback to beat the Sixers in seven games.
  At the end of the season, the 76ers dealt Chamberlain to the Los Angeles Lakers for Archie Clark, Darrall Imhoff and Jerry Chambers.  At the time, the trade appeared to make some sense from the Sixers' perspective.  Chamberlain was making noises about jumping to the American Basketball Association, and GM Jack Ramsay didn't want to risk letting Chamberlain walk away for nothing.  Nonetheless, the Sixers didn't get nearly enough in return. The man who was in position to take over as the center, Lucious Jackson, suffered a severe injury in 1969 and was never the same player after that. The Chamberlain trade sent the Sixers into a freefall, which Ramsay accelerated by subsequent divestiture of All Star forward Chet Walker to the Chicago Bulls.
  While the rapidly declining 76ers continued to contend for the next three seasons, they never got past the second round. In 1971–72—only five years after winning the title—the 76ers finished 30–52 and missed postseason play for the first time in franchise history.
  The bottom fell out in the 1972–73 season.  For all intents and purposes, the season ended when Cunningham bolted to the ABA, leaving the Sixers with a roster of Greer and little else.  The 76ers lost their first 15 games of the season, and a few months later set a then-record 20-game losing streak in a single season.  Their record following the 20-game losing streak was 4–58, and the team at that point had just lost 34 of 35 games.  The 76ers finished the season with a 9–73 record, leading the skeptical Philadelphia press to call them the "Nine and 73-ers". Under Coach Roy Rubin the 76ers went 4-47.  It was his first and, as it turned out, his last NBA coaching job.  He was succeeded by player-coach Kevin Loughery, who went 5-26 the rest of the way.  The 76ers finished an NBA-record 59 games behind the Atlantic Division champion Boston Celtics. The nine wins by the 1972–73 squad is the fourth fewest in NBA history, and remains the fewest for a full 82 game season.  The 73 losses, although threatened several times, remains the all-time low-water mark for any NBA franchise. The 76ers' 0.110 winning percentage was a record worst at the time, and is still the second lowest in NBA history. This record was broken by the 2011–2012 Charlotte Bobcats which was shortened due to a lockout. (That Bobcats team finished 7-59, for a .106 winning percentage.) Only six seasons earlier, the 76ers had set the NBA record for most wins in a season. The 76ers of 1972–73 is considered to be the worst team that ever played in NBA history.
  The next year, the 76ers would hire Gene Shue as their head coach and they slowly came back. In the 1975–76 season, the 76ers acquired George McGinnis from the Indiana Pacers of the ABA (after the Knicks tried to sign him, not knowing that the 76ers owned his rights). With him, the 76ers were back in the playoffs after a five-year absence, and even though they lost to the Buffalo Braves in three games, a "Doctor" would come along and get the team healthy enough to stay in perennial contention.  During this period, however, one last personnel misjudgment had effects when the team used the fifth pick overall in the 1975 draft to select Darryl Dawkins directly from high school.  The immensely talented and physically imposing Dawkins seldom, if ever, lived up to his great potential in part because of a perpetual adolescence.
caption: Philadelphia-born Joe Bryant was a first round draft pick who played for the 76ers between 1975–1979.
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