The NBA’s most overrated and underrated players, based on ESPN’s Top 100 list

Men used to build houses. Now they only rate NBA players on the internet.

ESPN dropped its list of the NBA’s top 100 players this week as the 2024-2025 season approaches. It’s important to note that the list is based on “predicted posts” for this season. Victor Wembanyama certainly wasn’t the best No. 11 player in the NBA last season as a rookie, but ESPN ranked him there based on their assessment of how he’ll develop this season. That makes sense to me. This is not the case with some of these other rankings.

I also marked the most overrated and underrated players on ESPN’s list last year and I’m pretty happy with my performance. Oklahoma City Thunder winger Jalen Williams was certainly much better than the No. 95 player in the league last year (he’s No. 44 on the new list), and Zion Williamson surpassed his No. 57 spot after finally breaking into the Was able to play close to a full season (70 games). I correctly recognized that Klay Thompson was overrated at #41. My big mistake was that Jaylen Brown was overrated at #19. He certainly silenced me en route to becoming MVP of the 2024 NBA Finals.

Here are the big misses on ESPN’s list this year.

Underrated: Herb Jones, F, New Orleans Pelicans

ESPN Rank: 97

Jones is considered the best non-center defender in the NBA. The 26-year-old Pelicans winger was named first-team All-Defense last year and was one of five players in the league to have a steal rate of at least 2.2 percent and a block rate of at least 2.6 percent while playing more than 1,000 minutes. At 6-foot-1 and a 7-foot wingspan, Jones is almost one of the NBA’s few five-position defenders. The Pelicans believe in his defensive versatility so much that they reportedly plan to use him as their nominal center this season (Williamson is actually New Orleans’ fifth-team pick, but Jones will play this matchup often). Jones also made major strides offensively last season, hitting 41.8 percent of his threes on 3.6 attempts per game. Jones is certainly a low-impact offensive player and still needs to improve his three-point volume, but his energy, activity, motor and tremendous feel on defense make him much more impactful than the 97th best player in the league.

Underrated: Isaiah Hartenstein, C, Oklahoma City Thunder

ESPN Rank: 88

Hartenstein makes a huge impact every night, bringing so much to the table without really taking anything away. The 26-year-old center is an outstanding fullback, an extremely efficient scorer, an elite rebounder and a skilled passer as a midfielder in the halfcourt. When he took the starting center spot for the Knicks last season, Hartenstein ranked No. 2 in defensive EPM and No. 14 in overall EPM. While there’s always some excitement when it comes to all-in-one impact stats like EPM, the 13 players ahead of him are all bona fide stars. Using “True Shooting Percentage Plus” to measure his scoring efficiency via Basketball-Reference – where 100 is the league average adjusted for each season – his 116 TS+ shows that he scored at an extremely efficient level. Hartenstein doesn’t shoot threes and isn’t a great scorer (he averaged less than 8 points per game this season), but the Thunder valued him highly enough to give him an $87 million contract this offseason. He is one of the best “connective” players in the NBA and a big reason why the Thunder are considered the Western Conference favorites to start the season.

Underrated: Trae Young, G, Atlanta Hawks

ESPN Rank: 37

Injuries limited Young to just 54 games last season, but if he had qualified for the official leaderboards he would be 13th overall (25.7 points per game) and second in assists (10.8 assists per game). The diminutive point guard is, of course, a terrible defender, but he made so much progress in that regard last season that he should now be excluded from the “worst defender in the NBA” discussion. It’s fair to be skeptical of Young, as the Hawks haven’t had much team success since he led them to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2021, but his mix of scoring and playmaking at extremely high stakes is still good enough to make this list to stand further up.

Overrated: RJ Barrett, F, Toronto Raptors

ESPN Rank: No. 53

Barrett finished last season phenomenally after being traded from the New York Knicks to the Toronto Raptors as part of the OG Anunoby deal. In 32 games with Toronto, Barrett averaged 21.8 points, 4.1 assists and 6.4 rebounds per game while shooting an impressive 61.5 percent. These numbers were all significantly better than Barrett’s first 4.5 seasons in the league, so I’m skeptical that they’re sustainable. Throughout his career, Barrett has generally been an inefficient scorer (career shots plus 92 when 100 is average), struggling to make plays for his teammates, regularly missing free throws (career 71 percent from the foul line) and generally seeing His teams perform better when he’s on the bench. I have been writing about Barrett since he was in high school and express my deep support for him following the tragic death of his younger brother last year. It would be so cool if Barrett was actually something like a top 50 NBA player, but I just can’t buy it.

Overrated: Dejounte Murray, G, New Orleans Pelicans

ESPN Rank: 43

Murray is a good player, and a change of scenery this season – he was traded from Atlanta to the Pelicans in the summer – should serve him well. However, it appears his reputation on both ends of the floor is a bit inflated at this point. Murray was considered a very good defender in his early years in San Antonio, but he performed terribly defensively last season (24th percentile, per EPM). He has good numbers offensively – he averaged 22.5 points, 64 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game last season – but he has always struggled with his scoring efficiency. Murray hasn’t come close to league-average scoring efficiency in any of his seven professional seasons, with his career goals-plus average standing at 93 (again, 100 is average). Maybe Murray’s defense looks a lot better this season with him playing alongside Herb Jones instead of Trae Young, but 43 still feels a bit rich to me.

Overrated: Jalen Green, G, Houston Rockets

ESPN Rank: 69

Jalen Green finished really well last season after Alperen Sengun left for the Rockets and the field suddenly opened up. Green averaged 27.7 points per game in March of last season while shooting nearly 50 percent from the floor and 40.8 percent from three-point range. As a former No. 3 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, Green is obviously super talented, but he’s always been way too raw for his career to really make a difference. Even a good month in which many NBA teams are reviewed before the playoffs shouldn’t really change that. Green was still an inefficient volume scorer last season (93 goals plus), who is clearly negative defensively (27th percentile, per EPM) and doesn’t make plays for his teammates. The fact that Green is 10 spots ahead of his teammate Fred VanVleet on this list is crazy to me because VanVleet was better last season. Of course, this list is predictive and Green has the talent to live up to or exceed this ranking. I’m just not buying it until I see more than a good month.