This was the Philadelphia 76ers' preseason, 1972. Other than aging guard Hal Greer, who eventually would be inducted into the Hall of Fame, there were no other signs of the 1966-67 76ers, one of the greatest teams in the history of the NBA. The players, and certainly not the first-year coach, had no idea they would someday be sadly known as the all-time worst.

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"Kevin Loughery and I were in the backcourt, and all through camp we kept hearing that one of us would be traded," Dave Wohl recalled. "Every day, Kevin would look at me and say, 'I'm getting traded.' I'd say, 'No, it's me.' "

They knew that things were not right, that Roy Rubin, a success at Long Island University, was terribly overmatched. General manager Don DeJardin recalled that Marquette's Al McGuire had accepted the job, but was rejected by ownership when "he asked for up-front payments."

The players knew more clearly that nothing good could be coming when they beat the Boston Celtics in their first exhibition game and saw Rubin's reaction.

"We knew the Celtics would play their starters eight, nine minutes, then finish the game with guys you'd never hear about again," said Wohl, now an assistant coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves. "But we won the game, and, in the locker room, Rubin pranced around and said, 'These Celtics are not so tough.' Kevin gave me a sidelong glance and said, 'This is going to be a long bleeping year.' "

The longest ever. The Sixers, with 19 different players, with Loughery replacing Rubin as the coach halfway through, finished 9-73. They were 5-26 at home, 2-36 on opponents' courts and 2-11 at neutral sites. They gave up 116.2 points per game, a minus-12.1 scoring differential. No team has ever been worse. Of course, this season's New Jersey Nets, 7-57 with 18 games remaining and in an all-hands-on-deck struggle to avoid matching these 76ers, are trying.

Loughery and Wohl would go back and forth about their status until, just before the start of the season, word came that Wohl, a onetime star at Penn, was being traded to the Portland Trail Blazers for center Dale Schlueter.

"Kevin," Wohl said, "looked disappointed that it wasn't him."

Wohl essentially was escaping, even though the three teams that employed him that season -- the Sixers, Blazers and Buffalo Braves -- finished a combined 51-195. On the other hand, Schlueter had no idea what he was getting into.

"No clue whatsoever," Schlueter said from his home in Portland. "Really, it was a pile of crap. The coach knew absolutely nothing about how to coach in the NBA. He had no clue how to handle adults. He had been around college kids. We had some veteran players, but it was like a revolving door.

"We didn't lose by tremendous amounts, but it got to a point where [opponents] said, 'There's no way in the world you're going to beat us.'"

The Philadelphia Daily News beat writer, the late Jack Kiser, regularly referred to Rubin, the coach, as "Poor Roy Rubin."

They played home games in the Spectrum, in Pittsburgh and Hershey in a 17-team league. They started 0-15 and at one point lost 20 games in a row. They were 4-47 when Loughery, who later coached the New York Nets to two ABA championships, stepped in as the player-coach; he finished 5-26. The Sixers ended the season 59 games behind the Celtics (68-14) in the Atlantic Division.

"The most discouraging part," Loughery said, "was playing your best and you got beat. But it was tougher playing than coaching. We had a good bunch of guys; we just weren't any good. When you can't play any better and you still get beat, you know you're in trouble."

Fred Carter was their leading scorer at 20 points per game. John Block was their representative in the All-Star Game. An aging Greer sat glumly at the end of the bench, appearing in just 38 games and averaging 5.6 points, a situation Carter termed "abominable." Four of the players on that roster are deceased -- Dave Sorenson, Manny Leaks, Luther Green and John Q. Trapp.

The legend, though, remains.

Some people insist this is true: During one game, Rubin wanted to sub for Trapp, who shook his head "no" and looked into the stands. Rubin saw a relative or friend of Trapp hold open his coat to reveal a revolver. Trapp stayed in the game.

Block insists another story about Trapp is true: "There was a game just before the All-Star Game, and John didn't get to play after Kevin hurt his ankle," Block said. "At halftime, Rubin told John he wasn't playing anymore. I was sitting next to John on the bench, and he was drinking a big cup of ... I think it was bourbon."

"Every now and then, a team shows all the signs of perhaps breaking our record," said Carter, who was named the MVP of the 9-73 team and who prides himself on being the inventor of the fist bump. "That forces me to go to church and light candles to preserve our record. You can achieve immortality so many ways; if our record is broken, people might not [remember] that I played in the NBA. We would be forgotten souls.

"Kevin and I had played in the Finals for the Baltimore Bullets against the Milwaukee Bucks [in 1971]. We had beaten New York in the Eastern Finals, winning in seven games after falling behind, 0-2. We won Game 7 in New York; I made the jump shot that [sealed] the game. We had gone from the penthouse to the outhouse. We had played with Gus Johnson, Earl Monroe and Wes Unseld in Baltimore. We knew they weren't walking into our locker room."

Carter accepted his MVP award at the annual college writers' dinner and said he did not know if he was being honored for winning nine or losing 73.

Looking back, Carter said, "Just spell my name right, because it's better to be remembered. How could we have an MVP? I didn't lead us anywhere. I was embarrassed to be the MVP."

Carter had been disappointed not to be named to the All-Star team.

"When I came back from the All-Star Game," Block, now living in San Diego, said, "Loughery was the coach. At our first practice, he said he didn't want anybody to leave early because the team had made a trade and he didn't want anybody to hear it first on the radio. John Q. Trapp said, 'I'm gone. I'm out of here.' I said, 'John, no way.' I already knew. I had already talked to DeJardin."

Block went to Kansas City for Tom Van Arsdale. The two players then made a deal of their own: They traded apartments.

"We were 4-47," Block said. "I hated losing."

"The amazing thing I saw when I got there was that we got along so well as a team," said Van Arsdale, who scored 14,232 points in his career, the most by a player who never appeared in the playoffs. "The bad thing was, as soon as we got close to a win, something bad would happen. We were snake-struck. I remember we beat the [New York] Knicks, and it was like winning the World Series."

In training camp at Ursinus College, Block had roomed with Steve Mix, a young forward from Toledo. When Rubin, very early one morning, made his final cut, it was Mix. It was widely believed that Rubin dropped Mix to make room for Green, who also was from Long Island University.

"That was as amazing as anything," Block said. "I couldn't believe it. The players were astounded, because [Mix] had really performed well."

Green appeared in five games for a total of 32 minutes.

"It was," Mix said, "the best thing that ever happened to me."

Mix was back as a starter the next season, with Gene Shue as the rebuilding coach; the team, in successive seasons, won 25 games, then 34, then 46, then went to the '76-77 Finals with Julius Erving, George McGinnis and company.

Mix stayed with the Sixers until the end of the 1981-82 season; he appeared in the Finals three times with the Sixers, then again with the Los Angeles Lakers in '82-83, losing to -- of all teams -- the Sixers.

Mix, who later became a broadcaster with the Sixers, spent the 1972-73 with the minor league Grand Rapids Tackers; he remembers averaging 38 points, second-best on the team, traveling to some cities via camper, "one with the sleeper over the driver's side. We managed to fit 10 guys in, and we won the championship."

"I made $85 if we lost and $105 if we won," Mix said. "I was killing people for $20 a game."

When the Sixers' season mercifully ended, Loughery began scouting for the college draft. At the same time, he was negotiating a new contract as a player. Negotiations, he recalled, were not going well, and, "I disappeared for a couple of days."

He did not show up the day of the draft. Instead, he accepted the coaching job with the Nets. The Sixers drafted Doug Collins, who became a four-time All-Star. Loughery inherited Erving, the young, flamboyant Doctor J.

Coming to the Sixers was not the best thing that ever happened to Freddie Boyd, the guard from Oregon State who was the Sixers' first-round draft choice in 1972. He was the No. 5 overall pick in a year when the No. 1 pick, LaRue Martin, was a major bust in Portland; the No. 2 pick, Bob McAdoo, went on to win three scoring championships for the Buffalo Braves, and Hall of Famer-to-be Erving was the No. 12 pick by the Milwaukee Bucks, a team for which he never played.

Carter decided those Sixers were "the universal health spa of the league. Teams got well playing against us," he said. "When we walked through airports, I used to turn my travel bag with the logo against me so people didn't know who we were."

Still, Carter insisted it is better to be remembered for something, even if it is 9-73.

"It's like what people used to write on walls," he said. " 'Kilroy was here.' "

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