Ranking the NBA's Most Overrated Players of the Last 5 Years – Bleacher Report

This a touchy subject, and it’s almost entirely subjective, but every major sports league (including the NBA) contains players who are overrated.
Determining who qualifies depends on a number of factors. Do they get too many minutes on the floor? Are they overpaid? Is there a general public sentiment that disagrees with the numbers?
Players who check one or more of those boxes are in the mix, but again, this is subjective. We may have a similar perception of a player, while I think of him as overrated while you see him as properly rated.
And a common theme on this year’s list is youth. Most (if not all) of these players have plenty of time to improve. Inclusion here isn’t permanent.
To this point, though, based on a half-decade of evidence, these are the game’s most overrated players.

Luguentz Dort is mostly lauded for his defense, and that’s probably warranted.
Dunks and Threes’ defensive estimated plus-minus (one of the most trusted catch-all metrics in NBA front offices) has had him in the 83rd percentile or better in each of his four seasons.
And his defense has been more than enough to overcome his offense and make him a generally positive-impact player, at least according to that system.
But Dort, 24, has been one of the worst high-volume shooters in the NBA during his career.
Among the 69 players who’ve taken at least as many threes during Dort’s four seasons, he’s tied with RJ Barrett for 67th in effective field-goal percentage (only Dillon Brooks is worse).
Dort’s 47.6 mark there is 6.2 points shy of the league average.
And he doesn’t do a ton outside of trying to score to help his offensive impact. Among the 394 players with at least 2,000 minutes during his career, he’s tied for 284th in assist percentage.
Of course, there may not be many people who perceive Dort as a future star. And he’s on a very manageable contract (especially with the incoming increases of the salary cap). Those things limit his “overratedness,” but the offensive woes are more pronounced than they’re given credit for.

Gabe Vincent is coming off a solid playoff run in which he started all 22 games he played, averaged 12.7 points, shot 37.8 percent from deep and helped the Miami Heat make the NBA Finals.
That was enough for the Los Angeles Lakers to give him a three-year, $33 million contract and have ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins call them the winners of the summer for signing him.
(He also declared Vincent as Miami’s second-best player, but we’ll leave that one alone for now).
Vincent for the full mid-level exception is probably a fine bit of business, and he could well continue to play at the level he did during the 2023 playoffs, but he isn’t likely to start in L.A. And his career numbers suggest that postseason run may be an outlier.
Vincent is 27 years old and has career marks of 7.7 points per game with a 49.9 two-point percentage and a 33.9 three-point percentage.
And while those are definitely dragged down by two seasons in which he was fighting for his life, his 2022-23 stats aren’t much better: 9.4 points with a 51.2 two-point percentage and a 33.4 three-point percentage.
Those numbers in combination with the fact that Vincent is an undersized guard makes it difficult to celebrate his signing with the same enthusiasm that others in the media have.

After being selected with the fourth overall pick in the 2019 draft, De’Andre Hunter has started all but six of his career games with the Atlanta Hawks.
As recently as last summer, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that he and Trae Young were the only untouchables on the Hawks roster.
He’s even been compared to Kawhi Leonard.
But the reality of Hunter hasn’t quite lived up to any of that. A 13.9-point career scoring average is solid, but his three-point percentage is below average, and his ancillary contributions are almost nonexistent.
Among the 394 players with 2,000-plus minutes during his career, he’s tied for 341st in assist percentage. Since bringing up that rank may not be fair (given the fact that he plays with Young), it’s also worth noting that he’s 255th in that group in rebounding percentage, 341st in steal percentage and 268th in block percentage.
In other words, Hunter has to do more to warrant his position in the core of a team that should be a perennial playoff team with Young on the books.

Career averages of 18.1 points and 2.8 assists for a 23-year-old player with 270 starts sounds great, but RJ Barrett has been one of the worst shooters in basketball over the course of his career.
And his overall impact on plus-minus has been absolutely dreadful for the New York Knicks.
During his four seasons, only 15 players have logged more total minutes than Barrett, and that might actually contribute to his rank in points added by field-goal shooting, defined by Basketball Reference as “The number of extra points added by Field Goal Attempts made above league average.”
Without free throws, Barrett has scored 3,958 points on 4,157 shot attempts, or 503.4 fewer than a league-average shooter would have. The only player further below zero during his career is Russell Westbrook, who is obviously doing a lot more as a passer and rebounder than Barrett.
And regarding that plus-minus impact, the Knicks are minus-1.9 points points per 100 possessions with him on the floor over his four seasons, compared to plus-3.9 without him.
The whole time, he’s been held up as a franchise cornerstone (or at least a potential one).
Again, there’s still time for Barrett to improve. He’s only 23 and has shown hints of point forward potential. But so far, it’s been bad.

Despite famously “poking a bear” and almost immediately getting mauled by one in the playoffs, the Houston Rockets signed Dillon Brooks to a four-year, $86 million deal this summer.
It seems like a hefty price to pay for perhaps the worst volume shooter in the NBA. Over the last five years, he’s dead last in effective field-goal percentage among players with at least as many shot attempts. And that inaccuracy certainly hasn’t made him bashful.
Over the same time period, Brooks is 53rd in usage percentage (among 388 players with at least 2,500 minutes). About a quarter of the Memphis Grizzlies’ possessions with Brooks on the floor ended with a shot, turnover or trip to the line for one of the game’s worst shooters.
Fortunately for his sake, he was often on the floor with high-end offensive talents like Ja Morant and Desmond Bane, but his flaws (and overconfidence) may shine a little brighter on a rebuilding team like the Houston Rockets.

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