Today in Sports History: March 25th

3/25/1934 - Horton wins first Masters

Horton Smith wins the Masters Tournament in its inaugural event, becoming the first golfer to win the coveted green jacket. The Masters would later be recognized as a major tournament and is now considered the most prestigious event on the PGA tour. Unlike the other three majors, the Masters is played at the same course every year: Augusta National.

3/25/1973 - Sixers lose No. 73

The Philadelphia 76ers lose to the Detroit Pistons, 115-96, on the final day of the season -- making them the first (and as of yet only) NBA team to not come away with at least 10 wins in an 82-game season. With a record of 9-73, and a pitiful winning percentage of .110, the 1972-73 Sixers are almost-unanimously considered the worst NBA team of all time. The closest a team has come to matching their futility was the 1997-98 Denver Nuggets, who just barely won 11 games.

The 76ers began the '72-73 season losing 15 straight games; they had a 20-game losing streak in the middle of the season and they finished the year losing their last 13. Six of their nine wins were by six points or less. They won zero games in October, two games in November, one in December, one in January, the remaining five at the tail-end of February, and zero in March.

It was not a pretty time in Philadelphia sports. The Sixers, the Eagles, and the Phillies were all terrible -- the one saving grace was the Philadelphia Flyers, who won the Stanley Cup in 1974 and 1975.

Further reading:

The Sixers weren't just bad -- they were horrid [Sports Illustrated]