Most Overpaid and Underpaid Players on the New York Knicks

The New York Knicks have a cap situation that is much-criticized by the media and fans.

With the roster now almost complete, the Knicks are way over the salary cap and even the luxury tax apron, and the situation won't be getting any better until 2015.

Though there's no cap space left, it's not like every single player is overpaid. Naturally, on a top-heavy roster like this there are also going to be a few players getting paid a little less than they should.

I'm going to take you through the three most overpaid and underpaid Knicks currently on the roster.

Overpaid: Amar'e Stoudemire

As good as Amar'e Stoudemire is, there's no way he should be amongst the NBA's top five highest-paid players.

With all his injury trouble in the past—and the fact that he's coming off the worst year of his career—it's looking more and more like the Knicks will end up regretting signing such a big contract for such a long time.

It's not that they should regret bringing Amar'e to New York, per se, but they shouldn't have panicked and offered him such a terrible deal just because he was the only big name free agent willing to come to New York in 2010.

As a rule of thumb in the NBA, most $100 million contracts end up being mistakes, unless of course they bring one of the absolute best players in the league to your team.

Underpaid: J.R. Smith

The return of J.R. Smith for the 2012-13 season was anything but a foregone conclusion at the start of the offseason, even though he had a player option to return.

What caused those who wanted him to back to worry was that his player option was for little over $2 million, and a player like J.R. could earn a lot more than that out on the free-agent market.

Eventually, J.R. declined his option, choosing instead to re-sign with the Knicks for $2.8 million, making use of an exception that allowed him to have a slight pay raise.

Even with this pay raise, though, Smith remains the most underpaid player on the team, and it's a credit to him to sacrifice his salary in order to get a chance to contribute to a championship-quality team near his hometown.

Next year, the Knicks will have Smith's Bird rights, which will allow them to finally reward him financially, as they'll be able to re-sign him without worrying about the salary cap.

Overpaid: Steve Novak

Steve Novak is hardly breaking the bank for the Knicks, but $4 million is still a lot of money to pay for such a one-dimensional player.

The Knicks were justified in their decision to bring him back, though, because with his early-Bird rights they were allowed to exceed the salary cap in re-signing him.

But looking at it purely from a salary-to-performance standpoint, Novak is getting paid $4 million simply to shoot threes, since he doesn't play much defense or even rebound well at 6'10".

It's not the end of the world by any means, but there aren't many players in the league getting paid so much to do just one thing.

Underpaid: Iman Shumpert

As a player still on his rookie contract, Iman Shumpert is getting paid pennies in comparison to his value to the team.

His salary of $1.7 million for the 2012 season is barely over the veteran's minimum, and so far in his career, Shumpert has proven himself to be worth a lot more than that.

But it's not just the fact that Shumpert is still on his rookie contract that causes him to be paid so little—it's also the fact that he was allowed to drop to the No. 17 pick in the draft.

Had Shumpert been taken in the lottery like he should have been, his salary might not have been quite so low.

For the next three seasons, the Knicks are getting a steal with Shumpert on the roster, but if he keeps improving at this rate it might not be so cheap when it comes to signing his next contract.

Overpaid: Carmelo Anthony

It's only fair for a team's best player to also be a team's highest paid player, but in the case of Carmelo Anthony, $19.4 million may be slightly too much.

Looking around the league, other star players like LeBron James and Kevin Durant took slightly less money to give their teams a little bit of financial help to build around them.

But with the Knicks, it seems that both Anthony and Amar'e Stoudemire made maximizing their earnings a priority, leaving the Knicks in a tough salary cap situation.

It's hard to question an athlete for taking the money when it's out there—especially considering that their career could end in the blink of an eye—but seeing as both James and Durant ended up facing off in the 2012 Finals, taking a little less money may have paid off on the court for Anthony.

Underpaid: Pablo Prigioni

The Knicks only had minimum contracts to give out by the time they signed Pablo Prigioni, and unfortunately for him that meant having to accept the rookie's minimum—even at the age of 35.

For a player to give up his salary from the Spanish league to come to the NBA, it must have been a tough decision for Prigioni to take such little money, though there was talk of he and the Knicks looking for ways to possibly get him more.

In the end, Prigioni had to settle for a deal worth only $473,604—three times less than a player his age would normally be paid with the veteran's minimum.