I know what you’re thinking: Professional athletes can be underpaid? Isn’t this the same league that gives out nine-figure contracts to Amar’e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson and Rashard (bleepin’) Lewis?
If you turn your focus, however, from the dollar amounts to the market value then, yes, there are plenty of underpaid players in the NBA. For every Rashard Lewis contract, there are five players who are grossly underpaid.
Lewis is the face of bad NBA contracts and, as the league’s second-highest paid player, certainly deserves that spot.
But who headlines the list of undervalued talent? Is it the rookie stuck on the back-end of his rookie-scaled contract, waiting for that big extension? Or maybe it’s the versatile role player who doesn’t have a single “great” characteristic to sell on the free-agent market?
If it was easier to spot these value players, they probably wouldn’t come so cheaply. But they are all over this league.
Here are the 10 most criminally underpaid players today.