Who are the most overrated players in the NBA as a new season begins? Here's what our staff thinks
Oct 15, 2026 at 3:52 pm ET • 7 min read
Earlier this week we published our CBS Sports Top 100 NBA player rankings, knowing it's impossible for anyone to agree on these sorts of lists. That's sort of the point of doing them. They're (hopefully civil) conversation starters. One person might have Victor Wembanyama as the No. 1 player heading into the 2026-27 season, another person may have Nikola Jokić or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but everyone is going to have those guys near the top of their list.
For the purposes of this article you're about to read, we're looking for the significant discrepancies between where a player ranked on the CBS Sports final list, which was a creation of cumulative staff votes, and where a player ranked on our individual list. Based on these discrepancies, we published our most underrated players on Wednesday (James Harden was one of them), and now we're polling our writers for their most overrated players (James Harden is again one of them).
See, reasonable minds can disagree. Let's get to it.
Evan Mobley, Cavaliers
Top 100 ranking: 22
Why that's too high: Mobley is clearly talented and a phenomenal defender, but I have a hard time buying a guy who is a third option offensively as the 22nd best player in the league. Mobley took a step back as a shooter last year and given he's also not a dominant interior player, there are just a few too many limitations to his offensive game for me to place him as high as some of my colleagues. The defense is fantastic, and he's a productive offensive player, but I am in the "need to see it to believe it" camp with regards to another leap coming from him that puts him into that top-20 conversation. -- Robby Kalland
Ranking the NBA's top 100 players: Victor Wembanyama enters 2026-27 season at No. 1
Sam Quinn
Jalen Duren, Pistons
Top 100 ranking: No. 34
Why that's too high: In an alternate universe, Duren might land on the underrated list. He bet on himself last year and made his first All-Star and All-NBA teams. Then he went out and faceplanted in the postseason, getting badly outplayed by Wendell Carter Jr. for much of the first round against the Magic and then mostly being a no-show against the Cavs in the second round. When Cade Cunningham desperately needed support, Duren's points per game plummeted from 19.5 in the regular season to 10.2 in the playoffs. That decidedly poor performance led to a contentious and protracted contract negotiation between Duren and the Pistons this offseason. Duren eventually signed a new five-year deal worth $200 million, a handsome sum to be sure. But it was also a far cry from the $287 million max contract for which he was eligible. When your own team is playing hardball with you at the bargaining table and there are reports you might rather play for the Kings because you feel "disrespected," maybe something has gone sideways -- sort of like us ranking him ahead of better bigs such as JJJ, Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. -- John Gonzalez
James Harden, Cavaliers
Top 100 ranking: No. 47
Why that's too high: This is not a career-achievement ranking. When we put this list together, nobody factored in Harden's MVP almost a decade ago or his pre-pandemic scoring title, or at least they shouldn't have. This is a 2026-27 projection. As Brad Pitt said to the dude playing David Justice in Moneyball, "I'm not paying you for the player you used to be, I'm paying you for the player you are right now." And right now Harden is merely a good regular-season player durability and ball-dominant numbers have deceived the Cavs into thinking he's worth $100 million over the next three years (well, that and they traded Darius Garland, who's 10 years younger and generally the same player, to get him).
But I'll tell you what: If we do want to make this a career-based evaluation, how about those 48 career playoff games that Harden has had more turnovers than shots made? Forty-eight! He had seven of them in last year's postseason, when he averaged 19 points and five assists on 29% 3-point shooting. Do you have any idea how many NBA players could average pretty damn close to those numbers if their team gave them the ball as often as Harden? A lot. Those are not even close to good enough numbers from a guy who has to be extraordinarily good offensively to cover for his continued pathetic defense.
At the end of the day, Harden is an innings eater. He's going to get you through the 82-game slog, but you do not want him on the mound in the playoffs. I'm just going to go down the list of guys ranked behind him in our Top 100 and name the guys I am very confident most coaches/GMs would prefer to have on their team over Harden through the lens of winning playoff basketball: Jaden McDaniels, Trey Murphy III, Mikal Bridges, Desmond Bane, Damian Lillard, Josh Hart, Aaron Gordon, Alex Caruso, Payton Pritchard, Jrue Holiday, RJ Barrett, Devin Vassell, Ajay Mitchell, and I'm leaving guys like Cason Wallace and Isaiah Hartenstein and Draymond Green off because I know people who only know how to look at box scores are going to laugh at that. But trust me, if a GM would rather have Harden running their team than Draymond, even at this point in his career, playing his role going into a playoff game, they either don't know ball or secretly want to get fired.
I know the argument against some of these guys I just named is that they can't be the focal point of an offense, but listen, if you're a real playoff team, you already have that guy, and he's much better than Harden. For the Cavs, that's Donovan Mitchell. Winning playoff games becomes about having as many winning support players around the star(s) as possible. The Cavs would be a bigger threat in the playoffs with any one of the guys I just listed than Harden. They just don't have the name value. -- Brad Botkin
Paul George, Celtics
Top 100 ranking: No. 67
Why that's too high: Even though the trade happened over three months ago, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Celtics willingly trading their second-best player (Jaylen Brown), who is also a consensus top-20 player around the league, for … Paul George? It would've been a great trade maybe seven years ago, when George was coming off an MVP-finalist season with Oklahoma City, but not only has George declined as a player, but he also has one of the worst contracts in the league.
The Celtics are one of the smartest organizations in sports, so I still can't wrap my head around the trade. But going back to George's ranking, I think it's about 20 spots too high. George is still a good player, but I would comfortably take 15-20 players over him in our top 100 right now. Maybe he proves me wrong and has a great season with Boston, but I was surprised to see names like Cason Wallace, Domantas Sabonis, Ivica Zubac, RJ Barrett, Ajay Mitchell and even Ja Morant ranked behind him. -- Cameron Salerno
Brandon Ingram, Clippers
Top 100 ranking: No. 76
Why that's too high: I've never been able to get over Brandon Ingram's 3-point volume miraculously rising during contract years and then regressing back to the norm after he's signed. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it feels as though Ingram struggles to find the balance between the shot diet the NBA likely wants for him and the mid-range heavy approach he seems to prefer. There are elements of this dilemma throughout Ingram's game. At points, he's shown basically every skill you'd want a high-end wing to have. He defended really well at the end of his Lakers tenure, and it didn't follow him to New Orleans. He'll have stretches as a legitimate playmaking plus and then they'll disappear thereafter. All of it folds together into a player that can frustratingly feel like less than the sum of his parts. We don't know when exactly he suffered that partially torn Achilles and how much it affected him in the playoffs... but it feels notable that Toronto was substantially more competitive against Cleveland without its second All-Star than with him last spring. Scoring was a chore without Ingram in that series ... but it was a chore with him as well, and the younger Raptors gave Cleveland a series by mucking up the game and defending extremely well. The skill has always been here for Ingram. It just never adds up into the sort of impact on winning that you'd hope for. -- Sam Quinn
