10 Most Severely Underappreciated Players in the NBA

Some players in the NBA just don't get the credit they're due.

Some aren't appreciated because there is a hole in their game, so they get defined by their flaws rather than their strengths. 

Some play in smaller markets for unsuccessful teams, so they just get ignored. 

Some are actually stars, but their stardom has produced a kind of unwarranted backlash. 

These aren't necessarily "underrated" players either—some of these players might be "ranked" in various lists according to where they should be, but they aren't "appreciated" for what they are. 

Here are 10 such players. They are ranked according to their "degree of underappreciation," not according to their skill level. 

Blake Griffin

Blake Griffin's inclusion is going to surprise a lot of people here, but he is underappreciated, even if he might be "overrated" in some people's opinions.  

Perhaps it's his flopping tendency. Perhaps it's because he's got the Lakers irate and about a third of all fans are Lakers fans. Perhaps it's just the nightly highlights that leave some fans feeling like Griffin is being jammed down their throats. 

As a result, there's a kind of Internet anti-Griffin meme which has gotten way out of hand. The basic argument of a large segment of NBA fans who don't appreciate Griffin is that "all he does is dunk." 

This is preposterous for two reasons. First, it's not true. He actually has a pretty decent hook shot, which he sank at the rate of .588 last  season—the eighth-best percentage among those with at least 50 attempts, and 10th-most makes. Second, he also made 143 field goals between three and nine feet, which was the fifth most of any player in the NBA. 

There are also other facets of the game he is extremely proficient in. He's an outstanding rebounder. He has hauled in 11.5 boards a game over his first two seasons in the league. And he's a great passer for a power forward. He has averaged 3.5 dimes per game in his career. 

In the history of the NBA, there are five players who averaged 20 points, 11 boards and three assists their first two seasons in the NBA.  So, pointing out an argument is actually untrue is a pretty solid argument against it, but let's take this a step further. Let's say it were true. Would that be a bad thing? 

The reason that people say "all he does is dunk" is that he dunks exceptionally well. I don't mean just highlight-reel dunks, I mean actual number of dunks. He dunked it 192 times last year, which was 28 percent more than anyone else in the league. 

Real points came off of those dunks. Every one of them counted for just as many points as an 18-foot jump shot—they're just a lot more efficiently obtained. Saying "all he does is dunk" is saying "all he does is deliver the most efficient shot in basketball better than anyone else in the league." 

Being a great dunker is actually a good thing. 

Are there flaws in his game? Sure. He could work on his defense, but there's ample evidence that the Clippers' defensive problems are more systemic than an issue of Griffin. The Clippers gave up 2.8 fewer points per 100 possessions while Griffin was on the court. 

Of course that doesn't mean he's a great defensive player and his OPER is slightly below average at 16.8. I'd just say that he's not as bad as advertised.

Griffin is not a one-dimensional player; he's actually an incredibly diverse and multi-faceted player for a man who has only played two pro seasons, and his critics need to criticize less and appreciate more. 

Deron Williams

Deron Williams was one of the best point guards in the league just a season-and-a-half ago. Then he got traded to the New Jersey Nets and he magically dropped out of the conversation. 

Williams has career averages of 17.6 points and 9.2 assists. You can see the complete list of active players who can make that claim here. As you can see, he and Chris Paul make for a very short list of players. 

If you want to expand that list to players who are retired, we add a whopping four names: Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson, Kevin Johnson and Isiah Thomas. Three of those players are in the Hall of Fame, and Chris Paul will be some day. 

The "point" is that Williams is still an elite point guard, and it's not his fault he got traded to one of the worst teams in the NBA, or that once he got there, he and his teammates took turns getting injured. 

With the Nets moving to Brooklyn and having added Joe Johnson, and with Brook Lopez coming back from injury, the Nets are a playoff team now. And because of that, Williams' name will just as magically reemerge in the elite-point-guard conversation.

This is one of the more annoying tendencies in basketball conversations—players get judged based on who their teammates are and not on how they play. Williams was no worse when he got traded to the Nets, and he'll be no better next year. Only the teammates have changed. 

Fans should appreciate Williams for who he is, not depending on who his teammates are. 

Paul Millsap

It seems that every time I turn around, the Utah Jazz are looking for a reason to trade Paul Millsap—which, for the life of me, I can't figure out why. 

Since taking over for Carlos Boozer in the 2011-2012 season, he's had a PER of 20.7. That is the ninth-best rating among power forwards in the NBA, and 23rd-best among all players with at least 1,500 minutes. His 15.6 win shares is 22nd-best among all NBA players. 

I'm not arguing he should be an All-Star or that he's a top-10 player in the league, but I think he's earned a safe starting gig, especially when you consider his salary.

Only one player, James Harden, has more win shares over the last two season and has been paid less—and Harden was on his rookie contract. 

No one is getting more for less from their starting power forward, but for whatever reason, the Jazz don't seem satisfied. Millsap deserves a little more appreciation from his own team. 

Jose Calderon

Jose Calderon is another player who gets underappreciated because of who his teammates are. But now that he is finally getting teammates to pass the ball to, the Raptors are passing the starting job onto someone else. 

The problem with the Toronto Raptors last season is that they couldn't shoot worth a lick. As a team, they shot just .475 from the field, which was bad enough for 20th in the league. 

People often overlook the importance of team field-goal percentage when they are looking at assists. For example, last season the San Antonio Spurs led the NBA in effective field-goal percentage at .528, and "coincidentally," Tony Parker had a career high in assists. 

If a player passes to an open teammate and the player takes a shot, the passer is at the mercy of the shooter regarding the assist.  This is where "assist percentage" can be an intriguing stat. That tells you what percentage of field goals made by a player were assisted by a specific player while he was on the court. In essence, this helps to alleviate some, but not all, of the team dynamic. 

So with that predication, Calderon has the fifth-best assist percentage among all active players. The only ones ahead of him are Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Steve Nash and Rajon Rondo. That's pretty decent company.

Effectively, what's happened to Calderon is like handing a marksman a rifle with a bent sight and blaming him for only hitting the bullseye 80 percent of the time. 

The Raptors need to appreciate what Calderon has done for them, and that would entail actually giving him some undamaged weapons for a change instead of blaming him for the arsenal they've provided. 

Marcin Gortat

Here's a good, albeit bizarre trivia question for you: Which NBA player had the most win shares without making the postseason last year?

If you guessed Marcin Gortat, you're right! If you just guessed Marcin Gortat because his name is on the slide, though, you don't get any points for it. 

There are going to be those who are going to say, "that's just because of Steve Nash." They would have a pretty good argument since Steve Nash goes a long way to making Gortat a better player. After all, Gortat averages 6.4 more points per 36 minutes and shoots 10 percent better with Nash on court.

Why does one player contributing to another's success mean that we can't appreciate the player getting the help, though, especially when it's at center?

It's not like the center on every other team is the squad's primary ball-handler, and their success is completely independent of the point guard. Kevin Garnett is better with Rajon Rondo on the court. Same goes for Al Jefferson with Devin Harris on court.

On any assist, there are two distinct components: one player passes, the other player shoots. The passer is dependent on the shooter making the ball. The shooter is dependent on the passer getting him the ball. 

Nash did a great job of getting the ball to Gortat, but that shouldn't make us appreciate what Gortat did once he got it any less. 

Josh Smith

Even if you give him "basketball," there are still times when I think that Josh Smith still wouldn't be able to spell "basketball IQ." 

Josh Smith has a tremendously irritating tendency to shoot the ball away from the basket. And really, when he shoots, he misses. He'll sporadically make one, and that makes things even worse—he starts thinking he's Ray Allen and shoots every time he gets near the ball, enough to make Kobe Bryant look like a reluctant shooter.

This is not controversial. Among players with at least 500 jump shots, Smith had the second-worst effective field-goal percentage in the NBA last season. 

The thing you might be thinking right now is, "isn't this about most underappreciated players?" Yes, and that's just the thing. Some people look at a player's faults and define them almost exclusively by them. Yes, Josh Smith has a horrible jump shot that he's entirely too much in love with. 

But he's also an incredible athlete who can jump out of the building, guard three positions, block shots, get steals, pass the ball and rebound. He might be awful away from the net, but when playing close to the rim, he has a .693 field-goal percentage inside the restricted area, seventh-best in the NBA. 

He's a bonafide stat stuffer and was the only player in the league to average 18 points, nine boards, three assists, one block and one steal. He has his warts, but he's not just a wart. He deserves to be appreciated for what he is instead of just noted for what he is not. 

David Lee

I truly don't have a clue why David Lee is so utterly and completely ignored. Since 2008, there are three players who have 5,000 points and 3,000 boards: David Lee, Pau Gasol and Dwight Howard. 

When you talk about the best big men in the league, though, David Lee isn't even in the conversation. In fact, he's not even in the conversation about who's not in the conversation. Only occasionally is he in the conversation about why he's not in the conversation of who is not in the conversation. 

I'd continue, but I'm running the risk of confusing myself. 

I'll admit that a David Lee highlight reel is about as exciting as a PBS telethon, but that shouldn't take away from his productivity and value. He scores. He rebounds. He does both with a great deal of consistency. 

David Lee is precisely the kind of player every fan should appreciate. He comes in and does blue-collar work day in and day out and never gets the spotlight. He might not be the NBA leader in SportsCenter Top 10 Plays appearances, but he deserves a lot more appreciation than he currently gets. 

Joakim Noah

When ESPN saw fit to rank Joakim Noah as the 29th-best player in the game last year, it drew a lot of criticism from Noah's detractors.

The biggest strike against Noah is that he's not an offensive threat. This, to a degree, is true. He has averaged 10.8 points and 10.4 boards per game over the last three seasons. Though he's one of just eight players who have averaged a double-double in points and boards per game over that span. 

Still, he's not a torrid scorer, and most of his points come off of offensive rebounds and broken plays. They're manufactured points. On the other hand, manufacturing points is sort of a good thing. And beyond that, he does literally every other aspect of his game very well. There are metrics such as win shares, offensive rating, defensive rating and net rating (offensive rating-defensive rating) which can go a long way toward reflecting a player's true value on the court. 

Now, granted, those things can't be taken as full gospel. They don't tell the entire story, and I wouldn't suggest they do. They do say something, though, and we can't throw out what they do say because of what they don't say either. 

Basketball-Reference.com tracks the rankings in a number of advanced stats, and it's impressive how high Noah ranks in many categories. He's sixth in win shares per 48 minutes, eighth in win shares, 18th in offensive win shares, and sixth in defensive win shares. He's fourth in defensive rating, fifth in offensive rating, and second in net rating.

He's also ranked high in many of the conventional stats. He's second in offensive rebounds, 10th in rebounds, 15th in field-goal percentage, 15th in total blocks, fourth in offensive rebound percentage, and 11th in total rebound percentage. He also had the second-most assists among all centers in the NBA. On top of that, he became the first center in four years to score a conventional triple-double with 10 assists in a game. 

Other advanced stats also see him vindicated as a top-30 player in the NBA. He was ranked 30th in efficiency, and was just outside of the top 30 (33rd) in player efficiency rating, a stat which tends to emphasize scoring. 

Then there are the things that the stats don't necessarily convey. Noah is one of the best defenders in the league (as indicated by his lofty defensive rating). He has defended everyone from Chris Paul to LeBron James in isolation successfully. He defends Dwight Howard in the post. 

Then there are things that you can only see by watching. There's his heart, his will to win and his energy. His leadership is essential to the Bulls' success. 

The Bulls have three leaders on their team. Derrick Rose is the heart, Luol Deng is the head and Joakim Noah is the adrenaline. We have no problem celebrating players who do nothing well but score, but a player who does everything well but score gets ignored by the fans. Noah's numbers easily prove him as a top-30 player, and the things the numbers don't show should elevate his status beyond the numbers. 

Al Jefferson

Al Jefferson must have the worst luck of any player in the NBA. I honestly feel sorry for the guy. 

First, he gets drafted by the Celtics, who, for the most part, were horrible until they traded Jefferson for Garnett—who, along with fellow addition Ray Allen, made the Celtics a regular title contender. 

Then he toiled in obscurity in Minnesota. When his contract ran out there, he signed with Utah, where he was finally going to have a chance to play for a contender. 

However, as soon as the Jazz hit a slump, the ownership traded off their best player, Deron Williams. Then, future Hall of Fame coach Jerry Sloan retired, and the Jazz crumbled. 

The Jazz made it to the postseason this year, but then they got shredded by the vastly superior San Antonio Spurs. 

Jefferson has been a consistently high-level performer over the course of his career, but it's always been with awful teams. He's averaged 19.6 points and 10.1 rebounds per game since 2008, a feat which only two other players, Zach Randolph and Dwight Howard, share over the same span. 

Yet Jefferson gets virtually no love whatsoever. It's not that he's despised, he's just completely ignored. If the Raptors wanted to go with camouflage uniforms, they should have all just worn Jefferson uniforms.

Andre Iguodala

Andre Iguodala is the best representation in the league of a player who isn't appreciated for what he is because of what he isn't. 

What isn't he? He's not an elite scorer. He's a good one, but not an elite one. What is he? Every other thing you can possibly want in a player.

He's constant energy. He's tenacious on defense. He's a brilliant passer who had the best pure point rating among all non-point guards, even higher than LeBron James. He has handles. He doesn't turn over the ball. He scores in transition. He was the only player other than James to finish the season with at least 12 points, five boards and five assists per game. 

He's reminiscent of Scottie Pippen without Michael Jordan, and that's really the reason people tend to underappreciate what he does. He's not an elite scorer, so people tend to focus on that. He's so good at everything else he looks like he should be able to lead his team to a title. But because he's not a great scorer, he is not able to do that. 

But maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe a player doesn't have to be able to lead his team to a title for us to fully appreciate his talents. At the London Games, Iguodala repeatedly was the energy off the bench and had a great overall performance. 

It would be great to see Iguodala in a No. 2 role. If he could find a true superstar to play with, he'd be one of the best "Pippens" in the league.

For now, though, he's been a Pippen being asked to be a Joradn, and he's just not that.