Now that the L.A. Clippers have turned the corner, the title of NBA laughingstock is up for grabs. What’s amazing about this young NBA season is the number of contenders vying for the honor. Normally by this time in a season, one or two teams stand out as exceptionally horrible, while the rest of the league’s bottom half is merely below average. That’s not the case this season. In fact, you could make a compelling case for five different teams as the NBA’s worst.

Let’s start in Charlotte, where the Bobcats dropped to 4-11 with Monday’s loss to the suddenly empowered Clips. Expansion teams are always getting sand kicked in their faces and this team, with its 0-7 road record and five double-digit losses, is no exception. The Bobcats’ occasional bouts of respectability, however – such as Saturday’s win over the Knicks – make them too good to take honors in this group.

Golden State is another strong candidate. The Warriors haven’t made the playoffs in a decade, the league’s longest drought, and will be mathematically eliminated from this year’s race sometime around Presidents Day. GM Chris Mullin has made a litany of pea-brained moves that stripped what had been a fairly competitive roster, and doubled down by hiring a guy with no pro experience to coach it. Not surprisingly, Golden State is mired at 5-12. Five wins, however, is pretty rich in this company.

Atlanta is another downtrodden franchise that hasn’t been to the playoffs in a while. As an added bonus, they boast the league’s most uninterested fans. But at least the Hawks are here by choice. Atlanta opted to nuke the roster of a half mediocre team a year ago knowing that they’d pay the price with a certain trip back to the lottery. At 3-14, that prediction is coming to fruition. Youngsters Josh Childress and Josh Smith, however, make the Hawks’ situation slightly less hopeless than our finalists in Chicago and New Orleans.

Not only has Chicago been absent from the playoffs every year since Michael Jordan left, it hasn’t even come close to being respectable. In six years of rebuilding, the best the abomina-Bulls could muster was a 30-win season in 2002-03. In fact, their winning percentage in the post-Jordan era is an impossibly bad .255.They’re keeping up the faith in 2004-05, too, racing out to a 2-13 mark and showing their trademark signs of panic by cycling players in and out of the starting lineup at random.

Yet one team has been even less impressive than Chicago, making them my choice for the NBA’s new whipping boy: the 1-14 Hornets. On the court, it’s no contest. The Hornets’ NBA worst record includes an unfathomable 0-8 mark in their own building, where they even lost to the Hawks. The team ranks 27th out of 30 in both Offensive and Defensive Efficiency (my measure of points scored and allowed per 100 possessions),so the badness is spread evenly and generously.

It should be noted that injuries have been a major culprit in the Hornets’ demise. Their best player, dynamic point guard Baron Davis, is out at least two more weeks with a back problem. Their next-best player, center Jamaal Magloire, is out three months with a broken finger. Productive forwards David West and Rodney Rogers are hurt, too. As a result, poor Byron Scott has been forced to send out a makeshift lineup that includes castoffs like Junior Harrington and something called Matt Freije. By comparison, even the Nets are awash in talent.

With the Hornets, it’s about much more than wins and losses. Until this season, they’ve been perennial playoff participants, so their track record of failure doesn’t approach Chicago’s or Golden State’s. But in the big picture, one gets the impression the wheels are coming off.

Their struggles on the court are obviously a big part of that picture, but what puts the Hornets over the top is their status as the wandering vagrants of the NBA. In just their second season in New Orleans, they already have fans wondering how long it will be before the franchises moves on to its third city. The Hornets finished 28th out of 29 teams in attendance a year ago – keep in mind, this was their first season in a new city, when attendance normally booms – and not surprisingly, fans are staying away in ever-greater numbers given this year’s dismal effort.

Perhaps it’s tough for folks on the bayou to get excited about their new team given the franchise’s well-earned reputation for parsimony. Owner George Shinn’s frugality has cost the team Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, Glen Rice and Eddie Jones, among others, and players complained openly when the team failed to pull the trigger on a major free-agent addition this summer.

That reputation was on display for all to see last season, when Shinn dipped into the bargain bin for head coach/used-car salesman Tim Floyd primarily because he would work cheaper than anyone else. Better yet, in order to hire Floyd, he jettisoned Paul Silas, whose steady hand now is guiding Cleveland into the ranks of the Eastern Conference elite. Similarly, after the retirement of General Manager Bob Bass – who saved the team’s hide numerous times with deft deals and clever draft choices – Shinn avoided the A-list candidates and promoted Allan Bristow, whose main “qualification” was his ruinous tenure as GM of the Nuggets in the mid-90s.

As a more recent example of ineptitude, consider the recent trade that sent Darrell Armstrong to Dallas for guard Dan Dickau and a second-round pick. You might think the Hornets made the move to dump salaries, except that the two players make the same amount. You might think it was a move to get a young prospect, but Dickau can’t play and Armstrong has been one of the few reliable Hornets this season.

Shinn at least deserves credit for a heroic salesmanship effort. While Hornets fans sat scratching their heads, Shinn proudly beamed, “This trade is a great example of how we will make every effort to improve our team.” Um, yeah.

Listen George, if you really want to bring New Orleans a winner, you could start by selling the team. Until that happens, the Hornets appear well on their way to replacing the Clippers as the new butt of every NBA joke.