Ranking the Most Overrated NBA Players Right Now
It's time to have an uncomfortable conversation about some pretty good to really good NBA players.
Ranking the Association's most overrated contributors is always a painful meld of difficult and inexact. And in the interest of honesty, I really, really, really hate doing it. But I just got to riff about my most underrated players. It's only fair that I undertake this exercise as well.
To that end, this list amounts to one big-foreheaded person's opinion. My thoughts are my own. And this is my attempt at having an honest conversation. It's not supposed to be a declarative or malicious troll job.
Every player who appears here has real value. Some are fringe stars or, if everything pans out, have All-Star ceilings. They wouldn't make this list if they sucked.
The goal is to spotlight those who have outsized reputations or projections relative to what they've done on the court. This will be tackled from a national perspective rather than how singular franchises or fanbases are evaluating their own players.
Case in point: The Orlando Magic may have overvalued Franz Wagner by giving him a full five-year max extension after he struggled to knock down threes last year. But that sentiment was conveyed in the vast majority of reactions. So, neither he nor anyone in a similar boat will be included.
This exercise also tries to account for could-be candidates who are adversely impacted by their current situation. Takes will fly now that the Cleveland Cavaliers signed Evan Mobley to a max extension. Most of them will cite his limited offensive development as a concern. That's fair. But the degree to which he can grow will remain capped so long as he's beside two higher-usage guards and spending time next to a non-shooting big.
Someone like Jaden McDaniels falls into this category as well, The point of excluding him, Mobley and many others: opportunity matters.
Finally, the order is a subjective measurement of the disconnect between how a player is portrayed and his actual value and utility, both to his team and in a vacuum.
5. Jonathan Isaac, Orlando Magic
1 of 5
Nutshell Case: Per-minute impact goes only so far when the minutes don't add up.
Pick your favorite defensive metric. Jonathan Isaac probably rated at or near the top of it. The 26-year-old is as dominant as they come on the less glamorous end.
Just don't expect him to do it for more than 15 to 20 minutes per game.
A slew of lower-body issues, beginning with a left knee injury suffered in January 2020, have seemingly put Isaac on permanent availability management. He has appeared in only 103 regular-season games over the past half-decade and cleared the 25-minute mark only three times last year.
Make no mistake, this is a genuine bummer. Isaac functions like a singular defensive system when he's on the floor, and he's adapted his shot diet to consist mostly of dunks, layups and threes—the latter of which he drilled at a 37.5 percent clip in 2023-24.
There is no arguing against his talent. And there is no reason to dislike the five-year, $84 million renegotiation-and-extension that he signed with the Orlando Magic. They were able to fit his elevated salary for next season ($25 million) into their cap space, his salary drops to $15 million or slightly lower thereafter, and injury protections are baked into the deal.
This is more about the over-romanticization of per-minute impact. You have probably read or heard someone say Isaac was the NBA's best or most dominant defender on a per-minute basis last season. That's impressive and valuable. It caused some to lament that he was ineligible for All-Defensive honors.
But that's kind of the point. Isaac has totaled 1,000 single-season minutes only once in his career. It's not his fault. And it sucks. It's also reality.
Perhaps it is one he'll rewrite next year. Or maybe the year after. Until or unless he does, though, it doesn't make sense to campaign for his pseduo-inclusion in defensive-award talks as the mother of all "Well, if only" caveats. Per-minute dominance can mean only so much when you're 280th in total minutes for the entire year.
4. Jamal Murray, Denver Nuggets
2 of 5
Nutshell Case: Where would he be without Nikola Jokić?
Jamal Murray is a damn good basketball player—a fringe All-Star. He has some ridiculous playoff games under his belt, including a handful of epically clutch shots.
Reaching the heights that he's explored after tearing his left ACL in 2021 is an absurd accomplishment unto itself. Even last year, as he battled more injuries and churned out his usual doses of inconsistency, he averaged 21.2 and 6.5 assists while sustaining generational chemistry with Nikola Jokić and downing a bonkers 42.4 percent of his pull-up triples—a top-three mark among the 74 players who launched at least 100 of those looks.
Effectively toggling between two existences is part of Murray's inarguable mystique. Not all guards can operate as off-ball accessory and from-scratch hub. Murray straddles the line of both. Sort of.
Harping on how the Denver Nuggets fare when he plays without Jokić can come across as disingenuous. Because, well, the Nuggets have Jokić. It's not their job to care what Murray might look like in an entirely different situation.
Except for when he's in that exact situation for them.
Denver has not sustained a league-average offense in the minutes Murray logs without Jokić since 2018-19. Over the past two seasons, the Nuggets' offensive rating has ranked in the 13th and 5th percentiles, respectively, during the former's solo minutes. Last year, Murray's effective field-goal percentage went from 57.4 alongside Jokic to 49.4 without him, according to PBP Stats.
Caveats abound here. Murray missed an entire season during this stretch (2021-22). The supporting cast has changed. Head coach Michael Malone's substitution and limited staggering patterns leave us to read into small samples. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But Murray is widely expected to get a four-year, $207.8 million max extension after the Olympics. It's one thing to view him as no-brainer max when we're talking about what ESPN's Brian Windhorst calls the "fun max"—that initial contract following a rookie-scale pact. The third deal is a different type of investment. It needs to buy more certainty.
Right now, Murray doesn't quite provide that. The need for this to change, as Denver continues leaning into supporting developmental pieces, is greater than ever—and is invariably what must separate Murray from receiving a patented star label.
3. Miles Bridges, Charlotte Hornets
3 of 5
Nutshell Case: How much value does he provide to a winning team?
Miles Bridges returned to the Charlotte Hornets this past season after missing the entire 2022-23 campaign as well as the first 10 games of 2023-24 following his entering a plea of no contest to felony domestic violence charges in November 2022. Putting him here is not my attempt to be an arbiter of morality or even a comment on his three-year, $75 million contract that declines annually.
This is about his impact on the court. His extended absence is part of the equation, but he wouldn't be here if it didn't seem like the league at large has moved on. Enough teams reportedly sniffed around his availability before he re-signed with the Hornets that it proved as much, and in doing so, reinforced his appeal as a higher-impact player.
The raw numbers don't do anything to detract from that perception. He just cleared 20 points and three assists per game while converting over 50 percent of his twos for a second straight season and matching up on defense with some of the toughest frontcourt assignments.
And yet, I'm not sold on his numbers or role translating to a positive impact.
Bridges' offensive portfolio leaves much to be desired. He still gets to the hoop, but his rim frequency tumbled to a career-low rate in 2023-24. Flickers of self-creation and a jumper are scattered throughout his reel, but he's seldom been a bankable option from the perimeter. He has never shot better than 39 percent from mid-range, and 2020-21 is the lone season in which he's maintained league-average efficiency from deep.
Charlotte has asked a lot of Bridges on defense over the years, often because it doesn't have better alternatives. The returns are mixed at best. He has the body type to guard the Giannis Antetokounmpos, Paolo Bancheros and Lauri Markkanens of the league and doesn't find himself in endless foul trouble. But he won't lock anybody down.
His best role is probably as a helper, and even then, he's not going to generate a ton of turnovers, deter or stop looks at the basket or board a bunch of contested rebounds. He has finished just one season (2020-21) with a positive defensive EPM, according to BBall-Index, and Charlotte has never spit out a better defensive rating during his minutes.
Playing on some truly bad and/or banged-up Hornets squads clouds aspects of Bridges' value. And it's important context. But the interest he garnered from teams like the Los Angeles Clippers as well as the Cleveland Cavaliers suggests he's viewed as this bigger wing-forward hybrid who can either raise the floor or elevate the ceiling of a good team—or do both.
Frankly, while the per-game numbers during his past two go-rounds are nice on the surface, there's not enough evidence that he's capable of doing that.
2. Jalen Green, Houston Rockets
4 of 5
Nutshell Case: The season begins before the All-Star break.
Scorers in the earlier stages of developing and perfecting their arsenals can be too harshly judged. Youngsters need time, and Jalen Green doesn't turn 23 until Feb. 9.
Still, the amount of hype he generates for tantalizing closes to the regular season is unlike anything I remember seeing.
Take this past season. After a start to the year that had many clamoring for the Houston Rockets to trade him, Green averaged 27.7 points while knocking down 56.4 percent of his twos and 40.8 percent of his threes in the month of March. During that time, Houston went 13-2 and Green notched the league's second-highest plus-minus, trailing only Jalen Brunson.
This is objectively incredible. But the regular season doesn't begin in March. Or after the All-Star break. It starts in October.
It'd be one thing if Green's 2023-24 campaign qualified as an anomaly. It was more like an extreme microcosm of his entire career. He is notorious for coming on slow and then kicking it into higher gear as the schedule wears on. Just look at his career splits:
- Pre-All-Star Break: 18.4 points, 3.2 assists, 31.8 percent on threes, 52.7 true shooting
- Post-All-Star Break: 22.6 points, 3.7 assists, 37.0 percent on threes, 56.7 true shooting
That is a stark difference. And it becomes even more unsettling when you break it down by month. March and April are his highest-scoring periods, and it's not even close.
This might be easier to reconcile if Green were constantly coming on in time to spearhead a Rockets playoff push. But this was the first year of his career in which Houston's games still mattered following the All-Star break.
Even at his most complicated, Green wields a marketable skill set, as someone who can generate his own shot and break down defenses from dead stops and can also provide some stretch away from the ball. Nobody should be entirely out on him.
But it's past time for us to start taking his late-schedule surges with a metric ton of salt—until or unless that version of Green shows up in October, and November, and December, and, well, you get the point.
1. Jonathan Kuminga, Golden State Warriors
5 of 5
Nutshell Case: We still need more, at both ends of the floor, for longer.
Knowing full well I was days away from embarking on this mission, I goaded Bleacher Report's resident Jonathan Kuminga propagandist Grant Hughes into a conversation about his standing during the most recent episode of our Hardwood Knocks podcast.
Framing Kuminga's value against the backdrop of Lauri Markkanen trade talks, here's what we both had to say (17:35 mark):
"DF: I'm just at the point where I think he might be one of the most overrated players in the NBA. And I don't mean that as an insult. But we're talking about him as if he almost has this Mikal Bridges-type of non-star value. I see the vision with him. But as of right now, I don't trust the jumper. I don't trust his ability to generate his own shot unless he's in space. And the defense is kind of just all over the place.
"So I see the vision, and that rim pressure is great. And I don't know how much of this is on the Warriors. I've just reached a point where part of me understands why they'd want to keep him out of this [Markkanen] deal. But the other part of me is just, like, if it's Jonathan Kuminga or Lauri Markkanen, it's not really a choice."
"GH: There's not an argument that Kuminga's a better player than Markkanen today. I think the Warriors may be fairly convinced that a year from now, it might be a real discussion if things go right. I don't know. You're right, though.
"Part of it is, it's a glamor franchise, he's the best version of a hot prospect that they have, and so, everybody is aware of him. And the highlights do it, too. We love A-plus athleticism. And then it makes it harder to be rational about [how he] does not show up in the right spots on defense a lot. He doesn't rebound. So, I think it's not a hot take to say he's pretty overrated. At the same time, I think his potential is still stupidly high."
To what end Golden State's responsible for Kuminga's enduring limitations is debatable. He did not have what you'd call a consistent role until last season. And make no mistake, the per-minute production leaps off the page.
But this idea that he's cornerstone material, both inside and outside the Warriors organization, is bizarre. Maybe he will get there one day. I hope he does. He's not there yet, though.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac. Draft-pick obligations via RealGM.
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