15 NBA players certain to be overpaid in free agency
By Brad Rowland
The summer of 2016 is going to be crazy for NBA free agents.
Intense fans of the NBA have known this for some time, as the salary cap is set to rise at an unprecedented rate in lockstep with the league’s new television contract. Rather than going for a “smoothing” process, the NBA is stuck with a large jump in the cap beginning in the 2016-2017 league year and, without diving in too deeply, that leaves buckets of money on the table for players lucky enough to have their contracts expire at this particular time.
With all of that said, many free agents are going to be overpaid to various degrees. For every LeBron James and Kevin Durant who will be (vastly) underpaid due to the league’s “maximum” salary, there will be a handful of players who simply timed free agency perfectly in order to reach an undeserved level of financial reward.
To be fair, this isn’t the fault of any player and each and every individual represented should be free to seek the highest dollar amount possible. However, that won’t stop some NBA teams from overpaying in short-sighted fashion, and that brings us here today. We will take a look at 15 free agents that will almost certainly be overpaid this summer when compared to their actual on-court value, and it wasn’t exactly difficult to come up with an even larger list.
It must be said that every player on the upcoming list is valuable in some way, to the point where a few players could make a legitimate impact on the NBA title chase in the coming years. Still, the money will be flowing and, at least in some cases, team-based incentives will add gasoline to the fire.
Now, let’s get to the names, coming at you in alphabetical order.
Next: 15. Ryan Anderson