The Most Overpaid Players in the NBA

NBA fans don’t have much longer to wait until they’re watching their favorite team play on the court. But while the excitement builds up, so do the nerves – will last season’s poor performers turn things around? Will new players shine?

Ahead of the preseason, a new study conducted by Casino Guru USA identified the league’s most overpaid and most valuable players through analysis of 2026/27 salary cap hits and 2025/26 Win Shares (WS), assigning each one a final score out of 100.

Key findings

• The Indiana Pacers’ Pascal Siakam ranks as the NBA’s #1 most overpaid player, scoring 77/100 with a cap hit of $48.9M and a low WS of 2.6
• Patrick Williams of the Chicago Bulls follows in second place with a score of 74/100, while Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green ranks third with a score of 73/100
• Kon Knueppel of the Charlotte Hornets ranks as the NBA’s #1 best value player with a score of 11/100, earning a WS of 8.0 and a cap hit of $10.5M
• The Sacramento Kings’Malik Monk is the player with the #1 most expensive cost per WS at $20.2M

The top five most overpaid players

Pascal Siakam of the Indiana Pacers claims the title of the NBA’s most overpaid player, with the highest score of 77/100. With the highest cap hit in the top 10 of $48.9M, paired with a low WS of just 2.6, that equates to $18.8M per WS. He recorded a 69.3% from the free-throw line last season, an overwhelming 6.1 percentage points lower than his career average of 76.4% and 5.8 percentage points below the average power forward.

In second place is the Chicago Bulls’ Patrick Williams, scoring 74/100. Williams’ WS of -0.1 is the lowest in the top five and he averaged 3.0 rebounds per game, around 32% lower than the 4.4 average for power forwards last season, as well as an overall Box Plus/Minus of -4.5 – all while having a cap hit of $18M – and even though it’s significantly lower than Siakam’s at the top of the ranking, Williams is the fourth highest paid in his team.

The Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green follows closely behind in third with a score of 73/100. With the second highest cap hit in the top five of $27.7M, Green finished the 25/26 season with a field goal percentage of 41.8%, which is 6.3 percentage points lower than the 48.1% average of all power forwards – and with his low WS of 1.7, that works out at $16.3M per WS.

Myles Turner of the Milwaukee Bucks places fourth, scoring 70/100. Across the 71 games he appeared in, Turner averaged 5.3 rebounds per game, which is around 18% lower than the average for centers across the league of 6.3, and 1.3 lower than his career average. His cap hit stands at $26.6M, equating to $8.9M per WS (3.0).

Malik Monk of the Sacramento Kings also scores 70/100, sharing fourth place with Myles Turner. Although Monk’s WS sits at just 1.0, with his average rebounds at 1.9 against 2.9 for all shooting guards, his cap hit is lower in comparison to Turner’s at $20.2M – this positions him as the player with the most expensive cost per WS, which is equal to his cap hit.

The top five best value players

On the other end of the scale, the NBA’s best value player is Kon Knueppel of the Charlotte Hornets, with the lowest overpaid score of 11/100. Knueppel averaged 18.5 points per game, a difference of 6.8 compared to the 11.7 average for small forwards, as well as a 42.5% three-point shooting, which is 6.6 percentage points higher than the position’s average of 35.9% – all while on a rookie contract with a cap hit of $10.5M, making that $1.3M per WS (8.0).

In second place is the Houston Rockets’ Amen Thompson, scoring 14/100. Thompson averaged 7.8 rebounds last season, more than double the average of 3.1 for point guards, earning himself a 10.3 WS – the highest in the top five players. And although his cap hit is the highest in the top five at $12.3M, that works out at an impressive $1.2M per WS.

The third spot is taken by Tre Jones of the Chicago Bulls with a score of 15/100. In the 25/26 season, Jones shot 55.3% from the field – a remarkable 10.8 percentage points above the average of 44.5% for point guards, and 8.2 above the entire league’s average of 47.1%. While his WS of 5.7 is slightly lower than Knueppel and Thompson, his cap hit of $8M is the lowest among the top ten players, which equates to $1.4M per WS.

The Washington Wizards’ Deandre Ayton ranks fourth, scoring 16/100. Ayton’s field-goal percentage from last season is even higher than Jones’ at 67.1%, 13.2 percentage points above the center average, and a staggering 20 percentage points above the NBA’s average. With an only slightly higher cap hit than Jones at $8.1M, Ayton holds a WS of 6.2, working out at $1.3M per WS.

Harrison Barnes of the San Antonio Spurs sits in fifth place, scoring 17/100. Power forwards across the league shot 35.9% from three on average, with Barnes sitting slightly higher at 38.8% - a difference of 2.9 percentage points. His cap hit is the lowest in the top 10, joint with Jones at $8M, resulting in $1.7M per WS (4.8).

Conclusion

With a sport as widely-followed as the NBA, it’s only natural for followers to give their opinions on whether a player’s performance matches their salary – but in this study, the evidence speaks for itself, with players like Pascal Siakam having the highest cap hit in the team yet producing a 2.6 WS.

Methodology

In September 2026, Casino Guru USA gathered the following metrics on every NBA player:

• 2026/27 cap hits, sourced from Spotrac – only players with a cap hit of at least $8 million were included
• 2025/26 Win Shares (WS) sourced from Basketball-Reference - Win Shares estimate how many of his team's wins each player was responsible for, on one scale that spans every position, which is what makes a fair comparison possible
• Cost per WS - cap hit divided by WS, to demonstrate the price of one win of production
• Players were then ranked across every position group, considering their pay and their production, by creating scores from 0-100, with a higher score indicating they are more overpaid.

Players who appeared in fewer than 49 of 82 games (under 60%), or logged under 500 minutes, were excluded from the final ranking, as well as players with no 2025-26 stats at all (season-long injury, or a 2026-27 newcomer). Additional statistics on performance were sourced from StatMuse.

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