The 25 Most Overrated NBA Players of All Time
Iverson, Kobe, Melo, Isiah, Nique, Rose, Russ, and more… let’s hurt some feelings!
Overrated is a spicy, hot-take word. What does it mean to be overrated? Who rates players, and who decides which guys are overrated or underrated? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and player ranking is a mostly subjective thing, but with the help of a little perspective and some key numbers and statistics, we can put players in proper context.
It’s not the worst sin in the world to be overrated. In order to be overrated, one must first be good, probably very good — just not necessarily as great as you think. Calling a player overrated does not mean they’re bad or even average. It just means history tends to hold them in higher regard than it ought to.
This is not about dumping on players from old eras that couldn’t cut it in today’s league. Of course the game has advanced and players nowadays are more athletic and more skilled. But fans are more advanced in 2019 too, and just volume and points aren’t enough anymore. Basketball is about winning a team game, and accomplishments like All-Star appearances and making the Hall of Fame should be really meaningful.
So who are the most overrated players in NBA history? Let’s hurt some feelings and count them down from 25 to 1…
25. Devin Booker
Might as well start out with a bang. It’s tough to be one of the most overrated players in NBA history as a 22-year-old, but Booker is well on his way. Booker stans insist he is one of the best players in the league, buoyed by a 70-point game against Boston and three straight 22-ppg seasons.
But has Booker even played a meaningful NBA minute yet? The Suns continue to be awful despite all of Booker’s gunning. They’re eight points per 100 possessions worse for his career, and no worse with him off the court, thanks in part to his 43% shooting and terrible defense. Booker is about to begin a five year $158 contract extension. He’ll either play his way up this list or off of it by the end.
24. Bill Bradley
Bill Bradley’s Wikipedia page is long and proud, with his basketball accomplishments alongside a storied political career. Bradley led Princeton to the Final Four and remains the all time Ivy League leader in points and points per game, and he went on to win two NBA championships with the New York Knicks. Those titles and that reputation got Bradley into the Basketball Hall of Fame more than his play in the NBA.
Bradley made only one All Star team and averaged 12 points, 3 boards, and 3 assists in a 10-year career. Van Breda Kolff once described Bradley’s difference making skill as “self discipline.” That sounds nice and all, but Hall of Fame should mean more.
23. Bob Cousy
Bob Cousy won six NBA championships with the Boston Celtics and racked up 13 All-Star appearances. He also led the league in assists a record eight straight seasons in the 50s, including an absurd MVP campaign when the Celtics suddenly got good during Bill Russell’s rookie season and voters decided it must be because of their one-handed 34%-shooting point guard and not the landscape-altering center.
We promised not to dump on past era players, but watch one of Cousy’s YouTube highlight reels and remember these are the best plays they could come up with and they wouldn’t even make a high school mix tape in 2019. Cousy had a career true-shooting percentage under 45% and a dribble that would make your eight-year-old blush. Let’s just be grateful the game of basketball has moved forward.
22. Robert Horry
Robert Horry was awesome. He won seven NBA championships as a forever role player, and Big Shot Bob made more than a few dramatic game winning shots for the Rockets, Lakers, and Spurs. Horry was a winner wherever he went and did everything he asked of him, a career to be envied. But the talk of Hall of Fame is silly.
Horry never made an All Star team and only scored more than 10 ppg just one season in his career, and as much as we remember all the big shots, he was a pretty pedestrian 34% three-point shooter in his career. Good thing we’ll only ever remember the ones he made.
21. Slater Martin
Slater Martin has the worst PER of any multiple All Star. He was known as a great defensive point guard, and he better have been considering he made seven consecutive All Star teams despite scoring under 10 points a game for his career with just 4 assists a game.
Martin is a good reminder that basketball was different in the 50s and that championships trump everything else. Numbers or not, Martin won five titles in the 50s and today is the only Texas Longhorn in the Basketball Hall of Fame. At least until Kevin Durant retires.
20. Karl Malone
Malone is an all time NBA great — he just might not be quite as great as the numbers make him look. We have a tendency to overrate players who are really good for an especially long time, letting their longevity rack up big numbers into the twilight of their career.
Remember how big a deal it was for LeBron to pass Michael Jordan in scoring recently? Kobe Bryant is next, and it will be an even bigger deal for Lakers fans, but do you know who is second all time in points? It’s Karl Malone, thanks in part to being very good for 14 All Star seasons and ranking second all time in minutes played.
Malone benefited from playing with a Hall of Fame point guard and coach in the perfect system for 18 years, one that inflated his numbers and made him look very good. But while Malone’s offensive pick and roll was a great bread and butter, it also left him with limited offensive creativity and no real backup plan when it didn’t work. The Mailman doesn’t deliver on Sundays, after all. Malone should never have been a two time MVP, and he had a pretty rough off court history to boot.
19. Stephen Marbury
It feels like Stephon Marbury was an NBA star for a long time, but he made only two All-Star teams, though he did score more than 15 points per game for the first 11 years of his career. Still, he did it on just 43% shooting and he was atrocious defensively.
Basketball Reference only tracks on/off data since the start of the century, so that misses the first few years of Marbury’s career. For what it does track, Starbury had a negative on-court differential all but one season. In other words, just about the only thing Stephon Marbury did consistently was lose games. Well, that and eat Vaseline.
18. Dominique Wilkins
Dominique Wilkins is remembered as one of the game’s natural scorers and one of the best dunkers ever. He was nicknamed The Human Highlight Reel, and he earned the moniker nightly. Wilkins averaged 28ppg over an eight-year stretch for the Atlanta Hawks, leading the league in scoring once and pushing Michael Jordan time and again.
Except Wilkins always had a knack for coming up short when it mattered. He only made the second round of the playoffs three times and never got to the Eastern Conference Finals, and he never contributed much on defense, nor in rebounds or assists. He may be the best Hawks player ever, but that is damning with faint praise.
17. Glenn Robinson
Big Dog was the number one pick of the 1994 draft after a storied career at Purdue, and he’s one of just 67 players in the history of the NBA to average more than 20 points in his career (counting active players). We remember Glenn Robinson as a big-time scorer, but he didn’t contribute much else or elevate his teammates, and he was mostly a black hole on offense.
Robinson scored plenty of points but never played on an offense with better than a 103 offensive rating until his final nine games with the Spurs on his way out of the league.
16. James Worthy
Big Game James was a very good basketball player, but was he really one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History? Worthy was like a better 80s version of Robert Horry. He had a knack for coming through in the game’s biggest moments. Worthy led North Carolina to the national championship and was named the Most Outstanding Player, then became the number one pick en route to three NBA titles with the Lakers.
The biggest game of Worthy’s life came in Game 7 of the 1988 NBA Finals. Worthy recorded 36 points, 16 rebounds, and 10 assists for the first and only triple-double of his career, helping the Lakers beat the Pistons by three to win one last title. Still, Worthy had all the help in the world, riding a complimentary role to a Hall of Fame career without ever needing to stand in the spotlight, so we only really remember the moments when the light shined brightest. Worthy was great — just maybe not as great as we remember.
15. Bill Laimbeer
Bill Laimbeer is a two-time NBA champion, the heart and soul of the Bad Boys Detroit Pistons in the 80s. He was a mean rebounder and, frankly, just a pretty mean dude. Laimbeer had a reputation for being one of the dirtiest players in the NBA. The Bad Boys would’ve had it no other way, but he would never cut it in another era.
Laimbeer was a rebounder and a defender but he didn’t contribute much on offense, scoring under 13ppg for his career. And as for that shooting and spacing he added? Laimbeer was under 33% on threes in his career and never made more than 57 in a season.
14. Antoine Walker
Employee Number 8 had an entire commercial campaign built around him at the turn of the century, and he was chucking threes before it became en vogue a decade later. Walker went three straight seasons with 7.4 or more three point attempts per game in an era where entire teams sometimes failed to shoot that many threes. It’s just too bad he didn’t make many of them.
Walker shot under 33% from behind the arc for his career, which is probably why he never played on a team with better than a 101 offensive rating. Antoine Walker was a three-time All-Star and a forever-time chucker.
13. Steve Francis
You remember Steve Francis from his glory days at Maryland and with the Houston Rockets, winning (co) Rookie of the Year and (runner up in) the dunk contest. Francis averaged more than 20ppg over his first four seasons in Houston but never made the playoffs in any of them.
Francis made two lasting contributions to the Rockets. One was missing so much time injured his junior season that the Rockets tanked and ended up drafting Yao Ming, and the other was whining his way out of Houston as the centerpiece of a trade for Tracy McGrady. Despite his nickname, Stevie Franchise never really settled into an NBA home and won just one playoff game in his career.
12. DeMar DeRozan
DeMar DeRozan is a throwback volume scorer in an era when that skill set is no longer valued. DeRozan averages almost 20ppg for his career but does it on almost 16 shots a game, most of them from the obsolete mid-range. He’s never contributed much to his team besides scoring, and his defense and inefficiency hurt his teams as much as his scoring helps them.
To wit, DeRozan has a positive on/off differential just one season of his career despite playing on a lot of winning teams. NBA fans are too smart to call someone great just because he shoots a lot of jumpers in 2019. Guess that’s why they call him Costco Kobe.
11. Jo Jo White
Jo Jo White was the point guard for the Celtics in the 70s, leading them to two championships en route to his induction into the Hall of Fame. He made seven straight All-Star Games with Boston, too. But today’s advanced statistics tell an entirely different story.
White has the lowest win shares per 48 minutes of any 6-time All Star, and he has an abysmal career 95 offensive rating with a negative offensive and defensive BPM. Advanced stats in today’s game don’t mean much for a player from the 70s, but that’s still pretty bad.
10. Carmelo Anthony
It’s possible Carmelo Anthony is both underrated and overrated at the same time. Early career Melo was terrific. He led Syracuse to a national championship as a freshman, and he was great early in his career with the Denver Nuggets, one of the most talented individual scorers ever.
But Melo got less efficient as his career went on, and his defensive deficiencies became more and more pronounced. Anthony’s career derailed for the Knicks, and he was actively harmful to the Thunder and Rockets before being jettisoned at cost to each. Melo was pretty good once upon a time, but he was a 10-time All-Star on reputation more than anything else.
9. Ralph Sampson
Sampson is remembered as an all-time great, but the truth is he peaked in college. Sampson was a three-time college player of the year for Virginia and the number one pick of the 1983 draft. When the Houston Rockets added Hakeem Olajuwon a year later, it looked like they’d dominate the 80s.
But Sampson only lasted four-and-a-half years with the Rockets, failing to win the big one and constantly hampered by knee injuries, and his career was quickly derailed after leaving Houston before an early retirement. Sampson is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for his early-career accomplishments, but he is overrated as an NBA player.
8. Joe Johnson
Iso Joe is the king of volume, playing every season this century until this one and pouring in points year after year. He scored over 20,000 points in his career and was the NBA’s highest-paid player at one point after signing a six-year $124-million deal. Johnson is a seven-time All Star somehow, and he’s the worst seven-time All-Star ever.
Only 19 players have made seven All-Star Games without getting into the Hall of Fame. Seventeen of them will be there someday, which leaves just Johnson and Larry Foust on the outside looking in. Yay? Iso Joe may not even be a top-50 shooting guard all time.
7. Derrick Rose
This one stings. As a lifelong Bulls fan, Derrick Rose was long one of my favorite players. There was a point in life I would have given up a kidney or two for Rose — too bad he needed a knee instead. No MVP in NBA history has failed to make the Hall of Fame. Derrick Rose will change that.
Rose was an exciting MVP pick at age 22 with 25 points and eight dimes a game, but he shot 45% that season and led an offense that wasn’t even ranked in the top ten. The Chicago Bulls were the best 2011 team on depth and defense. Rose was the heart of the team and the city, but he’s never been a particularly efficient scorer and was not a deserving MVP in hindsight. Maybe all the injuries derailed a promising career — or maybe they helped preserve a false narrative about an elite, young MVP who was never quite the player we all thought he was.
6. Russell Westbrook
You know about all of Russell Westbrook’s numbers by now. He’s led the league in assists the last two years and just averaged a triple-double a third consecutive season, which would have been blasphemy a few years ago.
Westbrook is a great player who plays at 125% at all times, and he may have even deserved his 2016 MVP. But the round triple-double numbers obscure a heap of turnovers, cheap rebounds, and inefficient volume scoring. Westbrook is the worst shooter in the NBA right now and the worst volume three point shooter in league history, making under 31% in almost 3000 career attempts. Westbrook’s raw numbers put him among the game’s elite, but his inefficiency and foibles will always leave him a step behind the rest.
5. Oscar Robertson
What’s the first thing you think of with Oscar Robertson? It’s triple-doubles, right? Robertson has been a popular name the past few seasons as triple-double mania has swept the NBA and Russell Westbrook joined the Big O as the only players in NBA history to average a triple-double over a full season.
But not all triple-doubles are created equal. Robertson played 44 minutes a game for Cincinnati, and that surely helped inflate his numbers. Robertson’s 30–13–11 line drops to 25–10–9 per 36 minutes, short of the 27–11–11 Westbrook has put up the last three seasons, and that’s not even taking into account the breakneck pace Robertson played many of his seasons at. Oscar Robertson is an NBA great, but his penchant for round numbers overrates him, historically speaking.
4. Pete Maravich
The legend and cultural relevance of Pistol Pete supersede his on-court NBA accomplishments. Maravich was an absolute monster in college, scoring a ridiculous 44ppg at LSU. He remains the all-time NCAA scoring leader despite playing just three varsity seasons, and his ball handling, passing creativity, and showmanship were far ahead of his time and helped create his legend.
Maravich put up big scoring numbers in the NBA but was almost always on bad teams and had a reputation of playing for show. Injuries forced Maravich into early retirement before he could find the right team, and he died tragically at age 40 from heart failure.
3. Allen Iverson
Allen Iverson is a cultural icon. Let’s be clear about that. He made an indelible impact on the league with his unique brand of fashion and personality, one that rings true for many players still today. But as an actual player on the court, his impact is overrated.
Iverson was the king of the volume scorers. He scored at least 26ppg a decade straight but shot under 43% from the field and just 31% behind the arc. Iverson took the fourth most shots per game in NBA history and is the worst-shooting volume chucker in the modern NBA. Iverson was an MVP, an 11-time All-Star, and a four-time scoring champion, and he’s seventh in NBA history with 26.7 points per game.
For a Philadelphia team without many scoring options, Iverson was consistently The Answer. But he made the least winning impact of all the all time great scorers. But man was Iverson fun to watch and root for, either way.
2. Isiah Thomas
The Baby-Faced Assassin might be one of the most overrated NBA legends. Isiah Thomas made 12 straight All-Star Games to start his career despite a paltry .109 win shares per 48 minutes for his career. That’s the worst among all 40 ten-time All Stars, and it’s not even half as much as the all-time greats Zeke’s often grouped with.
Thomas stepped his game up in the playoffs but was not the most important player on Detroit’s championship teams — he ranked fourth on the Pistons in win shares both title seasons. He led the league in turnovers as many times as he led it in assists. In his Book of Basketball, Bill Simmons got Isiah Thomas to tell him “The Secret” of basketball, that it “isn’t about basketball.” Good thing too, cuz if it was, maybe we’d properly rate Isiah Thomas.
1. Kobe Bryant
Finally, a list where Kobe Bryant can finish number one.
Let’s start with the good. Kobe was an all-time scorer. He had 13 straight seasons with at least 24ppg and finished third on the all-time scoring list. Bryant finished top-five in MVP voting 11 times, and he’s an all-time winner with five rings. But he wasn’t the best player by win shares or BPM on any of those five championship teams, and he arguably didn’t deserve the one MVP trophy he won, nor his second Finals MVP.
Bryant was also helped as much as anyone by sheer volume. Mamba leads the NBA in one career stat: shots missed, by over a thousand. He never met a shot he didn’t like and ranked fourth all time in usage and eighth in minutes, taking a ton of shots for a lot of years to rack up all those points. Bryant made 18 All-Star Games and 12 All-Defense teams, several of each on reputation, and he shot under 45% for his career and under 33% behind the arc. Among the top 25 all-time scorers, Kobe ranks 15th in true shooting, 15th in win shares per 48, and 21st in field goal percentage. He’s 12th all-time in points per game and 10th in the postseason.
All those numbers make Kobe a great player, but it’s time to stop grouping him into the conversation with Jordan and LeBron, like Kobe stans insist on doing. He doesn’t belong there, nor with Magic or Bird or Wilt or Kareem. Notice how all those numbers leave Kobe ranked around 12th to 15th among the all time greats? It’s time we leave Mamba there on the all-time rankings lists, too.
Don’t @ me.
Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, television, humor, and culture. Visit the rest of Brandon’s writing archives here. Originally published as a freelance opportunity at TheSportsDrop.com.
