Ranking the NBA's Most Underrated Players So Far This Season
It's time to celebrate the unsung heroes of the 2024-25 NBA season.
Everyone recognizes the biggest names and awards front-runners, but there's another group of players quietly putting up numbers and impacting winning without earning nearly as much fanfare.
"Underrated" is a fuzzy concept. It's hard to quantify and depends on a gap between actual value and public perception. Within these players' specific fanbases, they're probably not underrated at all. In other words, if you know, you know.
The problem: Not everyone knows! That's what we're here to correct by acknowledging players who've been under-the-radar great through the season's first month.
5. Goga Bitadze, Orlando Magic
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For the second year in a row, Goga Bitadze is thriving in a much larger role than he was expected to play. As was the case last season, he's stepped into a starting spot vacated by the injured Wendell Carter Jr. and provided boosts on both ends to an Orlando Magic team also missing leading scorer Paolo Banchero.
Bitadze has had an unusual career trajectory after entering the league as a stretch big in 2019-20. He's since abandoned the three-point shot, improved his rebounding and developed into a serviceable connective passer. The constants—elite shot-blocking rates and valuable offensive rebounding—are a big reason Orlando's net rating is 2.8 points per 100 possessions better with Bitadze on the floor than off.
Opponents shoot 4.4 percent worse than expected inside six feet and overall when Bitadze is the primary defender, and Orlando tends to surrender fewer looks at the rim with him in the game.
The Magic are 9-3 in Bitadze's 12 starts, during which he's averaged 25.0 minutes, 9.3 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.7 blocks with an eye-popping 71.2 true shooting percentage.
Far from a star, Bitadze is nonetheless a quality starter who shouldn't need injury-fueled emergencies to get a cracks at first-unit duties.
4. Kris Dunn, LA Clippers
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The LA Clippers' strong defensive start is about more than any single player, but Kris Dunn deserves at least as much credit for it as better-known teammates Derrick Jones Jr. and Ivica Zubac, not to mention Tyronn Lue, the head coach directing the operation.
Dunn leads LA in Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus and is among the best in the league (99th percentile) overall. As usual, he's posting a steal rate north of 2.0 percent and is defensive rebounding at elite rates for a combo guard. Opponents are shooting 42.9 percent on shots Dunn defends, the lowest hit rate among Clippers credited with covering at least 8.0 shots per game.
Beyond the numbers, Dunn's value to this specific Clippers roster is hard to overstate. James Harden and Norman Powell are LA's primary offensive threats, and both have historically graded out poorly as point-of-attack and off-ball defenders. Dunn would be a helpful stopper on any team, but he's integral to this one because of his ability to cover for his teammates' shaky work on D.
The bottom line data proves Dunn's indispensability. LA allows 15.3 fewer points per 100 possessions when he's on the floor.
3. Tari Eason, Houston Rockets
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After playing just 22 games last season, Houston Rockets forward Tari Eason might have fallen off fans' radars. Now back to full health and producing some of the most disruptive defense in the league, the 23-year-old forward needs to be acknowledged as one of the Rockets' key long-term pieces.
Eason's block rate sits in the 98th percentile at his position, and his steal rate resides in the 100th percentile. It's hard to top that. He's getting 3.0 deflections in only 22.8 minutes per game. Noted pest Alex Caruso is the only player in the league logging more deflections in fewer minutes.
In addition to wrecking opposing offenses with his relentless energy, Eason also unlocks an improved offensive version of the Rockets. All those scrambled possessions lead to runouts the other way, and Houston's transition frequency spikes by 2.5 percent—an elite figure—when Eason is on the floor.
The Rockets are deep and loaded with young talent, and Eason's missed time in 2023-24 cost him some recognition among that group. Now, it's impossible not to notice his two-way impact.
2. Andrew Wiggins, Golden State Warriors
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Depending on the year, or even the month, Andrew Wiggins could lead a list of the league's most overrated or underrated players. The swings across the last few seasons have been that severe. It was just last year that it seemed Wiggins couldn't even perform at a solid-starter level anymore.
Fortunately for Wiggins and the Golden State Warriors, the former No. 1 overall pick is currently playing the best ball of his career. It's just that Stephen Curry's ongoing excellence and a deep bench widely credited with carrying the Dubs to the top end of the West standings leaves Wiggins as one of the most overlooked stars of the young season.
Like everyone else on the Warriors, Wiggins is averaging under 30.0 minutes per game. That's why his per-36 averages are more useful in highlighting his work to date. He's putting up 22.5 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 1.0 block and 0.9 steals per 36—a statistical profile that looks even better than the one he produced in 2021-22—his lone All-Star season.
Wiggins is also matching or beating career marks from everywhere on the floor, including 48.1 percent from the field, 41.3 percent from deep and 76.6 percent from the foul line. Better still, he's earning trips to the stripe more frequently than any season since 2015-16, when he was a preposterously springy 20-year-old phenom.
The best perimeter defender on the team and, quietly, the answer to the key question "Who'll step in as a No. 2 option behind Steph?", Wiggins is playing like a star.
1. Ty Jerome, Cleveland Cavaliers
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Ty Jerome's days as an anonymous journeyman may be over, but you'd be forgiven for still thinking of him as the guy who bounced around between four teams in his first five years and never logged more than 50 appearances in a season.
That's a huge sample to measure against this past month, during which he's made himself a contender for Sixth Man of the Year and Most Improved Player.
Of Jerome's 10 career 20-point games, four of them have come this year. He's shooting a league-high 54.4 percent from deep, seemingly hasn't missed a floater all season (65.5 percent in the 3-10 foot range) and leads the NBA in true shooting percentage.
His 12.6 points, 3.8 assists and 2.1 rebounds per game are all at a career-high pace, and he's piling up all those averages in only 19.0 minutes per game. Extrapolate those numbers out, and you've got the most efficient scorer in the league putting up 23.8 points, 7.2 assists and 4.0 rebounds per 36 minutes.
No one shoots it this accurately over a full season, but Jerome pulled it off for a full month, earning the distinction as the league's most underrated player so far.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate through Nov. 25. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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