Eric Gordon: How About Some Love for One of the NBA's Most Underrated Players?

Usually when people talk about players who are the most "underrated" they go on and mention players who get a ton of credit for being "underrated." Sometimes players get so much "underrated" attention they become "overrated." Eric Gordon is not one of them. 

He actually is underrated. He's so underrated that most of the time when you see underrated lists, he doesn't even make the call as underrated. Heck, he's lucky if he gets a "how about Eric Gordon" comment he's so underrated. This is in spite of the fact that he could easily be argued as one of the top 50 players in the league; and if you were to suggest he was, then you'd be laughed at.

He hasn't gotten much love at all while he's been in the NBA. He was named to the All-Rookie second team. He wasn't named to the Sophomore team in the NBA All-Star game. He wasn't among the top 10 vote recipients for the All-Star game this year. He didn't make very many snubbed lists. In fact, among the major outlets, I couldn't find one "snub list" that he was on.

That establishes that by any definition, it's hard to say he's a "star" or that he's picked up on the radar, although his level of play suggests he should be. 

Take a look at some of the facts. First, just look at his PER. At 18.5 his PER was a solid 40th in the NBA last year. That's higher than Rajon Rondo, Devin Harris, and Gerald Wallace.

Certainly, that's enough to justify his being at least in the conversation for a top 50 player. 

Now there are problems with PER admittedly. First, it rewards bad shooting. Second, it doesn't take defense into account. Third, it only estimates created shots instead of going with actual numbers.  But let's take a look at those factors. 

First, let's take a look at the shooting. Eric Gordon's .450 field goal percentage, while not spectacular is hardly bad for a shooting guard. His .364 3-point percentage is certainly acceptable. His effective field goal percentage is .506, which is above the league average. 

When you look at his free throw percentage and true shooting percentage, he is actually pretty impressive. His free throw percentage is .825 and his true shooting percentage is .566. That's the eighth best in the NBA among players who scored more than 20 point per game last season. 

So much for the bad shooting criticism.

So what about the bad defense argument? Eric Gordon gives up just .85 points per play, fifth best among all starting shooting guards last season. It's doubtful that he's getting those fantastic numbers as a result of team defense as the Clippers really don't have a great team defense. 

More telling than that though is that when Gordon plays isolation defense, when he is more likely to be individually responsible to prevent the opponent from getting penetration, he has the lowest ppp against any starting guard in the NBA. His .63 against is better than Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Rajon Rondo, Chris Paul, Derrick Rose or even Tony Allen. 

So much for the defense criticism. 

Finally there's the issue of creating shots. In this regard, only 56 percent of his shots are assisted. While that's not on the level of Wade (37 percent), it's considerably better than Ray Allen (74 percent). In fact, it's quite comparable with Iguodala (52 percent).

Additionally, when you look at his APER he was 39th in the NBA, one place higher than his PER. APER is a slight improvement on PER because it shows actual, rather than estimated created shots. 

So much for the created shots criticism. 

On top of all that there's his clutch stats. His clutch numbers are among the 15 best in the NBA. When the score is within five points and there are five minutes or less left in the game, Gordon scores 38.8 points per 48 minutes. That's good enough for 12th best in the NBA. 

What makes this even more remarkable is his shooting percentages in those situations. He shoots a .566 field goal percentage, .533 from three and .932 from the stripe when the game is late and close. The only other player who had at least 30 points per 48 minutes while shooting .500/.400/.800 was Jason Terry who was 50 points worse from the field and 100 points worse from three. 

When you consider all of that, it's not at all hard to make a case that Gordon is a top 50 player. His top 40 PER, if anything, understates his value.

When you consider that he's improved each year he's been in the league, it's not at all hard to see him making the jump into the top 30 or even top 25 next season. 

Yet when you read about the great up-and-coming shooting guards, you're going to read about players like Arron Afflalo and OJ Mayo who have far less impressive resumes. You won't see much about Gordon though. In fact, some would weirdly argue that he's already a star, even though there's nothing to suggest he actually is. 

Perhaps in a town with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and the Lakers history, there's not much limelight left for the lowly Clippers. Any remaining love is given to Blake Griffin, and that's not to say anything is wrong with Blake. 

It just ends up being that Gordon gets left out in the cold. It's why I chose him to launch a new series of articles I'll be writing: "How about some love," which will illuminate the contributions of some players who just aren't getting the credit they deserve.