Building the NBA's All-Overpaid Team Ahead of 2026-27 Season
As we set out on our annual journey to build the NBA's All-Overpaid team ahead of 2026-27 training camps, it's important to remember this won't be a step-for-step repeat of the league's worst contracts.
A compilation of the least team-friendly deals considers the length of an entire agreement. Our All-Overpaid squad cares only about how much on-court value we can expect players to provide relative to their 2026-27 salaries alone.
This approach opens the door for expiring-contract names to make the First Team cut. More importantly, it is why you shouldn't expect to see players such as Donovan Mitchell or Devin Booker, whose mammoth pay grades aren't imminently problematic.
Final nominations will follow a conventional lineup structure: two guards, two forwards and a center.
Though selections are made independently, we'll be using a model developed by the Sporting News' Steph Noh to offer a window into every player's "salary surplus."
To reach that number, we'll assume each player averages as many minutes as they did last season while making at least 60 appearances or matching their average number of games played over the past three years—whichever is higher. The figures that Noh's model spits out will show us how much every selection is overpaid.
Guard: Ja Morant, Portland Trail Blazers
1 of 5
Age: 27
2026-27 Salary: $42,166,510
Percentage of the Salary Cap: 25.56
Overpaid By: $19.7 million
Availability warts coupled with a highly questionable roster fit make Ja Morant a necessary selection over fellow high-paid guards like De'Aaron Fox and Trae Young.
Ignoring the games-played problem is a non-starter. Morant has made just 79 appearances over the past three seasons. The reasons for his absences vary, covering injuries, suspensions and the Memphis Grizzlies' direction. But missing more than two-thirds of regular-season tilts for this long strips away the benefit of the doubt from your person, no matter what.
Better availability isn't a cure-all, either. Morant's rim frequency has been in steady decline for years, which is usually a harbinger of ebbing athleticism.
The path to recalibrating his game is, at best, unclear. He is a career 31.1 percent shooter from long range, doesn't have a ton of experience working outside a ball-dominant role and adds no value to the defensive end.
All of this becomes exponentially more problematic on the Portland Trail Blazers. They remain in desperate need of shooting, even with Damian Lillard set to play next season, and can't sustain Morant's on-ball usage without reorienting the roles of Deni Avdija, Scoot Henderson and Jrue Holiday.
This is the seedy underbelly of Portland's dice roll. It didn't give up a ton to get Morant; just Jerami Grant and Kris Murray. But it's now left to shell out 25-plus percent of the cap for a player whose best-case outcome won't come without collateral damage.
Guard: Christian Braun, Denver Nuggets
2 of 5
Age: 25
2026-27 Salary: $21,551,726
Percentage of the Salary Cap: 13.06
Overpaid By: $4.2 million
Christian Braun is young enough with the hustle-culture track record for this selection to look silly. You can also close your eyes, pick someone at random and find a player, many times over, with a much larger "overpaid by" projection.
Still, Braun remains the most unsettling kind of offensive wild card.
Already a low-volume three-point shooter, he saw his above-the-break efficiency last season plunge by 17 percentage points—the second-largest drop by any non-big who played at least 500 minutes, according to BBall Index. This would be easier, albeit still difficult, to write off if Braun's dependence on Nikola Jokić was traveling in the right direction.
It's not.
Across both the regular season and playoffs last year, Braun's two-point percentage nosedived by 28 points without the three-time MVP on the floor. He also posted a 31.8 true shooting percentage overall on self-created attempts—a career-worst mark that ranked in the 24th percentile leaguewide.
Dedicating this large of a salary to such a limited offensive player almost never turns out well. And when looking at how shallow and hard up for shooting the Nuggets remain, they will feel the ramifications more than most.
Second Team Guards: Jalen Green, Phoenix Suns; Jordan Poole, New Orleans Pelicans
Forward: Paul George, Boston Celtics
3 of 5
Age: 36
2026-27 Salary: $54,126,380
Percentage of the Salary Cap: 32.81
Overpaid By: $38.2 million
Certain members of the Boston Celtics' propagandist machine have started asking some variation of: What does Jaylen Brown actually do better at basketball than Paul George?
Congrats to those pretzel-twisters for looking at select shooting slashes and pick-and-roll numbers. But there are more than a few answers, the most important of which is: Jaylen Brown regularly plays basketball at all.
George has missed fewer than 15 games just once since 2018-19. And over that span, he has averaged over 30 absences per season. Counting on better health as he enters year 17, at age 36, verges on unhinged. It also guarantees nothing.
Playing more doesn't mean his effectiveness won't taper off. Whether he closes 2025-26 as strong as he did without a 25-game suspension giving him time to refresh is one of last season's great what-ifs.
Never mind what George does better or as well as Brown. Tethering almost 33 percent of your cap to this amount of raw uncertainty doesn't typically end well. It just seems nobody told Boston.
Forward: Patrick Williams, Chicago Bulls
4 of 5
Age: 25
2026-27 Salary: $18,000,000
Percentage of the Salary Cap: 10.91
Overpaid By: $18.0 million
Is it OK if you have a combo forward making $18 million who's projected to be overpaid by $18 million? We're asking for the Chicago Bulls.
Patrick Williams' issues need no introduction. He has never developed into a plug-and-pay offensive force, and his defense has topped out at "reasonable enough, if you squint hard enough."
Pick a catch-all metric. Any catch-all metric. If Williams has ever ranked better than 300th in it during a single season, screenshot it, print it out, frame it and send it to his agent.
Believe it or not, there's a chance Williams looks even more overpaid this season.
Chicago's new front office regime, led by Bryson Graham, has no draft or sweat equity invested in him. With Matas Buzelis, Caleb Wilson, Dailyn Swain and Leonard Miller all on the roster, there's a strong chance, if not inevitability, Williams spends more time outside the Bulls' rotation than in it.
Second Team Forwards: Nikola Jović, Miami Heat; Jerami Grant, Memphis Grizzlies
Center: Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers
5 of 5
Age: 32
2026-27 Salary: $57,985,752
Percentage of the Salary Cap: 35.15
Overpaid By: $18.4 million
Joel Embiid's "overpaid by" number is actually a gift. It rests on him appearing in 60 games—something he hasn't come close to doing since 2022.
Even if he's healthy, the Philadelphia 76ers could max him out at 45 or 50 games in hopes of preserving him for the playoffs. Lower than 60-game threshold by 10, and his "overpaid by" projection rises to nearly $25 million.
Any path to leaving Embiid off this list has to begin with "Look at what he can do when he's actually healthy!" But even that pipe-dream argument has lost steam.
To his credit, after shedding weight last year, Embiid appears to have slimmed down further. That could boost his on-court mobility and longevity. And yet, the fact we're having this conversation about the sixth-highest-paid player in the league says it all. His pay grade is under water, and it has no chance of coming up for air.
Second Team Center: Jakob Poeltl, Toronto Raptors
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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