Ranking the NBA’s biggest deadweight contracts

There are a lot of bad contracts in the NBA. There are four, however, that go beyond bad. They are pure deadweight. Who are these financial anchors?

It seems as if the pain from the summer of 2016 will never end. For some NBA teams, at least.

The Los Angeles Lakers are not one of those teams. They have almost completely wiped their slate clean, dealing the Timofey Mozgov contract last summer and stretching the remainder of Luol Deng’s deal. It cost the Lakers to make both of those moves, but they are still winners at the end of the day — they have LeBron James and $38 million in cap space next summer.

They may be a special case, however. There are other deadweight deals out there that teams will have to suffer through until their expiration.

And by deadweight, I don’t mean bad. Chandler Parsons is a bad deal, yes. But he can play. Andrew Wiggins? Paid way too much, but there’s still hope and utility. Same with Evan Turner.

By deadweight, I mean guys that just really don’t play — and if they do, they shouldn’t. They are just an anchor on the salary sheets.

There are not many of these cases in the league today, but there are four that standout.

4. Meyers Leonard

Neil Olshey had money to spend in 2016 and he wasn’t about saving it. From Evan Turner and Allen Crabbe, to Meyers Leonard, Olshey was willing to drastically overpay players that didn’t even have that big of an impact on the team’s performance. Turner has a role, and he was able to trade Crabbe. But Leonard? He’s still there, doing a whole lot of clapping from the bench.

In 107 appearances over the past two seasons, Leonard has averaged 4.8 points per game on 42 percent shooting from the field and 35.5 percent from deep. Leonard played in 74 games in the 2016-17 season. He had to, right? He just signed that big deal.

Portland finished at 41-41 that season. Last season, Leonard played in just 33 games (254 minutes total). Portland went 49-33.

With Jusuf Nurkic under contract and sophomores Zach Collins and Caleb Swanigan showing some upside, there is almost no room for Leonard. They probably won’t be able to deal him, though. He’s already made $18 million on this deal and owed another $21 million over the next two years — the Blazers will just have to live this deal down to the bitter end.