Ranking the Most Overrated NBA Players Of the Last 5 Years
We are about to embark on a mission, together, that requires the thickest of skins: ranking the most overrated NBA players of the past five years.
Cobbling together this list always incites division. Understandably so. “Overrated” is a term associated with zero positive connotations. But it’s important to remember that, while it’s not necessarily a compliment in disguise, appearing here requires players being 1) waaaay better at their jobs than most of us are at our own full-time gigs and 2) carrying real value at all.
Though both human and AI aggregators will inevitably ignore it, these names are not here because they stink. This exercise instead aims to spotlight players whose reputations feel most disconnected from the impact they’re having on the court since the 2020-21 season.
5. Jalen Green, Phoenix Suns
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Youth spares Jalen Green from climbing even higher up this ladder. His career spans just four of the five seasons inside our window.
Scorching-hot February-and-onward stretches do him a disservice. They kept hopes alive for him to reach stardom, ensuring expectations would never align with the career-long returns.
Green can look the part of a lead ball-handler and scoring option when measuring his performance through the eye test. His on-ball speed is tantalizing, and he's a combination of crafty and detonative around the basket.
Still, the numbers are what they are: not good. Averaging over 20 points per game for his career sounds glitzy, but it has come on suboptimal efficiency both on- and off-ball and without enough playmaking development.
The 23-year-old has posted a better-than-league-average clip on unassisted shot attempts just once, according to BBall Index. His shooting percentage on spot-ups has peaked in the 60th percentile—and placed in the 0th percentile this past year. His assist-to-usage ratio has never ascended past the 27th percentile. And through his tenure with the Houston Rockets, they posted a better net rating during his on-court time only once.
4. Kyle Kuzma, Milwaukee Bucks
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Kyle Kuzma could be placed higher on this list if we applied the rookie-year narratives to the rest of his career. But expectations began to shift almost immediately thereafter, and over the past half-decade, he’s vacillated between pockets of encouraging scalability (including on defense) and ultra-damaging high usage.
While Kuzma’s finishing around the rim has come a long way, he’s a net-negative scorer from everywhere else. He has yet to post a league-average effective field-goal or true shooting percentage.
Despite placing in the 90th percentile or higher of usage rate in each of the past five seasons, he’s failed to finish above the 34th percentile in points per shot attempt. And he’s finished north of the 45th percentile in the rate at which he draws shooting fouls only once.
Playing on the Washington Wizards for nearly four seasons is his saving grace. He soaked up necessary volume as a stopgap rather than as a should-be long-term building block like everyone else who will follow. He also routinely checked some of the tougher defensive assignments.
This context gives him slight cover against a statistical profile that includes some of the worst on-off splits of the past five years—just not too much.
3. Deandre Ayton, Los Angeles Lakers
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Outsized expectations pre-date Deandre Ayton getting the Los Angeles Lakers exceptionalism boost. There is a tendency to start off nearly every bit of analysis with some variant of “If he can recapture the defense and motor that helped the Phoenix Suns finish two wins shy of a championship…” as if the 2021 NBA Finals wasn’t four years in the rear-view mirror.
Rumblings of problematic behind-the-scenes behavior with the Suns and Portland Trail Blazers have little bearing on Ayton’s place here. His play leaves enough to be desired for it to do the heavy lifting.
The defensive engagement is prone to mountainous peaks yet even starker valleys. Ditto for his presence on the glass. His teams have defended better with him on the floor exactly once since 2020-21, and they’ve fared better with him on the defensive glass just twice.
Ayton’s knack for playing below the rim and away from the basket persists, too. His mid-range touch is decidedly above average but not nearly enough to offset abnormally low attempts at the hoop and charity stripe. Among all bigs over the past five years, he has finished no higher than the 44th percentile of rim volume and no higher than the 32nd percentile in the rate at which he draws shooting fouls.
Even the strongest compliments must be couched with the potential for disaster. Iztok Franko of the Diggin Basketball substack recently ranked Ayton as the seventh-best center in the West, ahead of names like Isiah Hartenstein, Dereck Lively II and Walker Kessler. Yet he still needed to note that “there’s also a real chance he falls out of the top 10, maybe even the top 15, if he doesn’t turn things around in Los Angeles.”
That, plus the Blazers deciding it makes more sense to pay him $25-plus million to play for the Lakers rather than hope to move his $35.6 million expiring contract, says a whole lot.
2. Marcus Smart, Los Angeles Lakers
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Injuries have limited Marcus Smart to just 54 total games over the past two seasons, which has virtually no bearing over his inclusion. This is more about him posting some of the worst shooting splits of the last half-decade relative to higher-volume names.
Out of the 155 other players to attempt as many shots since 2020-21, Smart's 50.1 effective field-goal percentage ranks 143rd. The point-blank finishing has been good. Any positive indicators from the perimeter have proven to be blips.
Smart looked out of his depth when used as an on-ball initiator long before leaving the Boston Celtics. He's finished higher than the 19th percentile in turnover rate just once these past five years. The passing struggles have reached new levels of alarming in his (admittedly) few appearances post-Beantown.
There's something to be said for Smart's teams regularly playing better with him on the floor. There's also something to be said about a body of defensive work that hasn't quite lived up to its legend. The level of responsibility he carries will always be immense, but even during the season in which he won Defensive Player of the Year (2021-22), there's a real debate to be had about whether he was even the most valuable defensive player on his own team.
1. Miles Bridges, Charlotte Hornets
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Miles Bridges has a strong case to be the NBA's standard-bearer for empty calories. That he's avoided being discussed in this vein is equal parts oversight, minor miracle and proof of his being overrated. (Note: Bridges sat out the 2022-23 campaign after being charged with and eventually pleading no contest to felony domestic violence.)
Consider what Tom Ziller wrote for the Good Morning It's Basketball Substack while arguing that the Charlotte Hornets should waive the 27-year-old:
"He's been given enormous opportunity in a starved vacuum and has made just about nothing out of it. He was the least efficient 20-point scorer in the entire league last season among players who qualified for leaderboards with a .541 True Shooting percentage. Yes, he was less efficient than Jalen Green! But don't worry, he was also the seventh least efficient 20-point scorer in 2023-24. The good news is that his only plus skill in the NBA is scoring; he brings just about nothing else to the table. So yes, his one positive attribute (scoring) comes with the poison pill of it being some of the least efficient scoring in the league."
Though Bridges' efficiency wasn't so bottom-of-the-barrel prior to 2023-24, his role was also easier. He wasn't as central to the Hornets' offense for his on-ball work.
Even then, his efficiency wasn't exactly standout. He's posted an above-average true shooting percentage twice in the past five years, and among the 96 players to match or exceed his usage rate during this span, his effective field-goal percentage ranks 41st—wholly unimpressive for someone who sees the vast majority of his made shots come off assists.
There aren't enough redeeming qualities elsewhere to warrant viewing Bridges as just another player. He can be moved around the positional spectrum on defense, but Charlotte has allowed fewer points per possession with him on the court just once for his entire career. His passing is nondescript for someone with his usage. Out of that same 96-player pool, his assist percentage ranks 73rd. His free-throw-attempt rate, meanwhile, ranks 71st.
As a player on the court, Bridges has utility. It just isn't close to that of a top-100 player—it's been that way for quite some time. Pick your favorite catch-all stat, and he's likely to grade out as a top-100 name in a single season maybe once.
Dan Favale is a National NBA Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
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