Who in your opinion are the most underrated players ever?

[AlexDelta]

shawn bradley? always remembered being the guy that people posterized, but he put up some good numbers over 11 years. wasn't just a tall guy with raw talent and no skills

....really?
The stormin mormon?

Shawn Bradley was terrible. His name and the word underrated don't belong in the same sentence together.

See, you just proved his point.

[jwise44]

Vernon maxwell

Guy was a monster and is my favorite player ever

[jwise44]

I think my favorite players makes the greatest underrated lineup ever

Gary Payton/Vernon maxwell/Scottie pippen/Charles Barkley/the dream


Yes a lot of them are known as greats, but I think they're all underrated...especially Payton


Damn imagine trying to score on them

[PurpleTrees]

Chris Bosh

[bran muffin]

Moses Malone, a 3x MVP who seems to be frequently forgotten these days. When people talk about big men and All-Time Greats, Moses Malone is often left out of the discussion and nobody even notices.

[montestewart]

shawn bradley? always remembered being the guy that people posterized, but he put up some good numbers over 11 years. wasn't just a tall guy with raw talent and no skills

....really?
The stormin mormon?

Shawn Bradley was terrible. His name and the word underrated don't belong in the same sentence together.

Can a post be onomatopoeic?

Of course it can, but these aren't. Do you even know what that word means or are you one of those people who throw out random "fancy" words to sound smart?

Adj 1. onomatopoeic - of or relating to or characterized by onomatopoeia
--> on·o·mat·o·poe·ia (n-mt-p, -mät-): The formation or use of words such as buzz or hiss that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

Adj 2. onomatopoeic - (of words) formed in imitation of a natural sound; "onomatopoeic words are imitative of noises"; "it was independently developed in more than one place as an onomatopoetic term"- Harry Hoijer
echoic, onomatopoeical, onomatopoetic, imitative

There's not even a single onomatopoeic word in either post.

Anyway, shawn bradley was pretty good in dallas and definitely is underrated by most.

Well, if I had any hope of sounding smart, you've smushed it.

Sorry mate, didn't mean incite anger. Think of it less literally, more as a lateral rhyme. As you point out, Bradley was pretty good in Dallas and underrated by most. Don't the words in that post sound a bit like underrated? Maybe I just should have said

See, you just proved his point.

[JohnnyKILLroy]

Mark Price doesn't get enough love. He was straight filthy.

[Duffman100]

Scottie Pippen? I always thought he got a ton of love. He was clearly awesome.

I'll throw out Eddie Jones. I loved that guy. Good defender, good scorer, could rebound and pass.

[jwise44]

Scottie Pippen? I always thought he got a ton of love. He was clearly awesome.

I'll throw out Eddie Jones. I loved that guy. Good defender, good scorer, could rebound and pass.

Scottie gets overshadowed by Jordan

Eddie jones is a good one and I'll also throw out Tim hardaway

[DrCoach]

Andre Miller

[DrCoach]

Rod Strickland

[druggas]

Connie Hawkins

[Star-Lord]

Op kind of lost me when he tried to argue that KJ is somehow better than Iverson a page or so later. Iverson blows him out of the water.

Scottie Pippen is not underrated. He was a notorious dick, but everyone knows how good he was.

I know he just got into the Hall, but I always thought Mitch Richmond was underrated, at least until recently. One of the best pure scorers I've ever seen, and it's a tossup between him and Glen Rice for prettiest looking jumper. I was extremely happy to see Mitch finally get his due.

Eddie Jones comes to mind as well. He was all arms and legs, and could kind of do anything he wanted. He was an awesome defender, a capable passer and shooter, and definitely a great athlete. Not a great ball handler, from what I can remember, and he certainly didn't have the competitive fire that the All-Timers had, but the dude was very good.

Michael Finley is kind of in the same boat. Different style than Eddie's, more power. He was the man in Dallas for about a couple of years there until Dirk came into his own.

Nick Van Exel is another favorite of mine. Loved the attitude he brought with him to every game, and when he was able to really channel that energy, opposing teams were in trouble. Nick's range seemed almost limitless sometimes, and I always loved how he would cup and cradle the ball when driving into the lane, which he did pretty often for such a small guy. He really chilled out when he got to Denver, and I remember he and Antonio McDyess were one of the funnest duo's to watch.

McDyess: Was supposed to be Shawn Kemp 2.0, or proto-Blake, whichever you prefer. Didn't get the respect he deserved, mostly because he was leading some atrocious Nuggets teams back in the day. Injuries robbed him of what could have been a really special career. I've always thought it was a testament to Antonio's overall quality as a basketball player that he was able to reinvent himself as a hard nosed, take no crap role player for championship teams.

[SA37]

Manu Ginobili.

His career numbers are deceiving. He's been one of the best shooting guards in the world for a long time. He's won wherever he has been and has no weaknesses as a player. On top of that he has probably been San Antonio's best clutch player. He's only been an All-star twice in the NBA, but to me he's one of the greatest to play.

[Trader_Joe]

Going with the three teams I watched the most in the past...

NY-Charles Oakley.
Amazing he made an AS game considering he wasn't about the numbers. Steady jumper and simply an exceptional defensive player.

NJ-Kerry Kittles
Injuries cut short and limited what could have been so much more. A two way player on offense and defense he could play transition ball with his steals and speed, while his shot had to be respected in a half court game.

BOS-Reggie Lewis
Seemingly your prototypical SF who could do it all. He carried the Cs out of the Bird era. Another one with a shortened career.

Present day...
Blake Griffin and Dwight Howard
People don't like their personalities (me included) and tend to take it out on their ratings of them IMO. Griffin rarely is discussed as the best PF in the game but has a case. The team didn't lose a beat when Paul went down thanks to him. Dwight gets overshadowed by sexier names like DMC and M.Gasol but he's still the beat C and probably big man in the game.

[Leslie Forman]

Op kind of lost me when he tried to argue that KJ is somehow better than Iverson a page or so later. Iverson blows him out of the water.

Iverson is the most overrated player in the history of the game. Inefficient volume points and nothing else. I'd take peak Gilbert Arenas over him every time, at least he could score 25-30 with solid efficiency.

On an all-time level, I think Wade is very underrated. At his absolute peak, he is, if not better, at least as good as prime Kobe. Just didn't have the longevity.

On a lesser level, Chauncey Billups. He didn't have the greatest counting stats, but his advanced stats were always huge and he obviously had a huge positive impact on his teams. Trading him for Iverson is what pretty much started this whole mess the Pistons have been in the last several years.

[ufsports]

Kareem is top five all time yet no one ever discusses him:(

[Star-Lord]

Op kind of lost me when he tried to argue that KJ is somehow better than Iverson a page or so later. Iverson blows him out of the water.

Iverson is the most overrated player in the history of the game. Inefficient volume points and nothing else. I'd take peak Gilbert Arenas over him every time, at least he could score 25-30 with solid efficiency.

This has nothing to do with the point I made.

One of the greatest tragedies of the wave of advanced stats in basketball is the death of context, which allows folks to actually believe such silly things as, "Allen Iverson is the most overrated player in the history of the game."

Kareem is top five all time yet no one ever discusses him:(

There's definitely a pattern emerging in this thread. People are less willing to shower someone with effusive praise when the person in question has a well earned rep for being a jerk. From Oscar Robertson, to Kareem, to Scottie, we see it time and again. Of course, people do tend to forget that Oscar and Kareem actually had pretty good reasons for being so aloof, or downright ornery in Oscar's case.

[montestewart]

OP, I really like this thread. I've been watching NBA since the 70s, and a lot of players I've liked through the years are cropping up here. I usually see threads like this in the Player Comparison board, but for its history, this seems like a good place.

One thing is distinguishing players who approached all-NBA level at their peaks but didn't maintain that high level for long (usually because of injury or relied too much on youthful speed). Obvious peak examples are Penny Hardaway, Tracy McGrady, Grant Hill, Brandon Roy, but people still know their names. Tiny Archibald led the league in scoring and assists in his 3rd season. Connie Hawkins didn't arrive in the NBA until he was 27 (long and apparently very unfair saga). He played at a pretty high level during those peak seasons and was definitely a big name when I first started following the NBA. No telling what his career would have looked like had he finished college and was drafted into the NBA as a younger man.

I'm a Bullets/Wizards fan, and thinking back to the 1978 and 1979 finals, I find a few names that seem underrated by history, including Gus Williams and Jack Sikma (Sick Muh) on the Sonics and Bobby Dandridge and Wes Unseld. Unseld was MVP in his rookie season, but I think underrated by fans even during his career primarily because he was not much of a scorer. I remember at a Bullets-Lakers game, Unseld had 20 points and Jabbar only had 17 (just checked the boxscore to be sure of the numbers). It was as if Unseld scored 50 points, it seemed so astonishing.

Kareem is top five all time yet no one ever discusses him:(

I occasionally see a poster saying something about Jabbar that reveals a lack of knowledge about how great he was. He was an MVP on two championship teams, won four other MVPs, and has three of the top four WS/48. Most people recognize his greatness for both his peak and his longevity, and also recognize that his personality has little to do with assessing how great a player he was. I don't think of him as widely underrated. Robertson is perhaps a bit more underrated because of the era he played in, but it's hard to deny averaging a triple-double over five seasons.

[Duffman100]

McDyess: Was supposed to be Shawn Kemp 2.0, or proto-Blake, whichever you prefer. Didn't get the respect he deserved, mostly because he was leading some atrocious Nuggets teams back in the day. Injuries robbed him of what could have been a really special career. I've always thought it was a testament to Antonio's overall quality as a basketball player that he was able to reinvent himself as a hard nosed, take no crap role player for championship teams.

+1. Total respect for McDyess. Came out like Amare, he was just filthy with his dunks.