All-Underrated Team

[CheddahCheese]

Underrated. You hear this term a lot in sports. To me, an underrated player is: a. good player that has never been selected as an all-star 2. good player that doesn't get talked about much.

PG - Kyle Lowry
SG - Monta Ellis
SF - Nicolas Batum
PF - Paul Milsap
C- Al Jefferson - great stats, incredible post moves, good defender. dudes just been on bad teams.

what's yours?

[Mandich]

Monta Ellis is NOT underrated

[Kenny]

Gary Neal
Arron Afflalo
Kevin Martin
Brandon Bass
Nene


A few players in their secondary position, but I had to fit in Gary Neal, Arron Afflalo and Kevin Martin on the list.

[Andrew]

Gary Neal
Arron Afflalo
Kevin Martin
Brandon Bass
Nene

Not a bad list. Jefferson, Millsap and Lowry are certainly in the conversation too. With that in mind, I might go with:

G: Kyle Lowry
G: Arron Afflalo
F: Paul Millsap
F: Al Jefferson
C: Nene

[_Steve_]

Gary Neal
Arron Afflalo
Kevin Martin
Brandon Bass
Nene

Not a bad list. Jefferson, Millsap and Lowry are certainly in the conversation too. With that in mind, I might go with:

G: Kyle Lowry
G: Arron Afflalo
F: Paul Millsap
F: Al Jefferson
C: Nene

I'd say the Nuggets were underestimated before the start of the season, but Nene wasn't. There were quite some teams interested in signing him...

[Andrew]

True, but if this is the criteria we're going by:

To me, an underrated player is: a. good player that has never been selected as an all-star 2. good player that doesn't get talked about much.

...then I'd say he still qualifies.

[Martti.]

Joel Anthony
Haslem
Batum
M Thornton
Chalmers

[benji]

Guys, we need to define "underrated" first. The criteria in the OP starts off well, but falls apart in the second part. How does one know they're not just missing the forest for the trees?

Almost a decade ago Hollander suggested this as where you start:
-Shoots a high percentage
-Few highlight plays
-Hits three pointers
-Gets to the line
-Passes well
-Few turnovers
-Rebounds well
-Good defense
-Doesn't block shots
-Plays fewer minutes
-Not a high draft pick or big time FA
-Plays in a small market, possibly on a non-contender, in a city with multiple sports teams

My person criteria is more subjective, in that the guy doesn't get the minutes he should.

Lowry, Jefferson, Ellis, Milsap, Nene, Martin, Afflalo, how are any of these guys "underrated" when they're starters and log significant minutes, some of them on pretty good teams? And even more a good chunk of them have logged big minutes for a while now.

I think setting specific criteria is important because otherwise it's just our own personal perception. For example, Ryan Anderson is underrated to me because of how long people have dismissed him until just recently and many still try to justify the truth away because well, "he can't be that good as I didn't think he was before!" Despite the fact we have four years of solid data showing he's a good player and now that he's getting time, he's producing as expected.

Ben Wallace went from underrated to overrated very quickly as everyone rushed to proclaim this or that. Hedo Turkoglu got the same treatment to the point he fooled a bunch of Canadians, some losers in Arizona and then came back to FOOL HIS OLD TEAM into paying him tens of millions of dollars. All when he'd been producing at the same level for years. Years!

So who is doing the rating? How are they doing the rating? We need these questions answered before we start talking about it.

And not making the All-Star team seems willing to subvert the "rating" process to a popularity contest.

[Martti.]

Haslem doesn't have highlight plays, works his ass off on the court. One thing to his disadvantage (And Joel Anthony), is that they play for Miami and are on national TV every night and they get a lot of praise for doing the dirty work. Haslem in 2006 maybe. The undersized PF who had to defend Dirk in the Finals. When Wade said he was the MVP of the Finals, that's when people started to take notice of his work.

[benji]

But what makes him underrated?

Consider we're assuming something like:
Everyone thinks he's a 5.
He's really an 8.

Except, even if we can measure the latter, we can't measure the former.

It's January 29th, 2012. Is Jeremy Lin overrated or underrated?

Assume he's cut like the Knicks intended so they can sign Walker D. Russell. Is he overrated or underrated?

Remember, you can't know anything he's done from Feb 4th forward.

[Sauru]

i think to be overrated and underrated there already needs to be some level of buzz around you. lin was not even rated back in january. overrated is much easier imo than under. benji is right, need to first define what is underrated. is it simply not getting on espn much? cause to the rest of the country josh smith might be underrated but where i live you would think they got another nique

[benji]

It's also so relevant to the time. A week ago we would say Lin was underrated a week prior, now with ESPN talking about him non-stop, the media obsessing over him, etc. he's probably overrated.

But even still we can't know for sure. The media is mostly hyping him for the story, THE KNICKS, OUT OF NOWHERE, etc. It has less to do with his actual "rating" on the court.

Let's say just for argument Lin is a 7. And a month ago he was "rated" a 2 by the media, he was underrated for a while. But when we've had this burst and they were 7-0 and he became an 11 because IT'S THE KNICKS so he was overrated. And he's fallen a bit but still might be an 8. But let's say he drops down to 15ppg and 5apg for the rest of the year and we rate that a 6. Are we rating that a 6 because we knew all along he'd do 15/5 or because we thought he was nobody, he exploded and came back to earth and we're adjusting?

Look at the hype around Brandon Jennings when he came in, put up numbers, exploded for 55, etc. And he's rarely mentioned now by anyone because he toils for the Bucks.

All this kinda of consideration and examples are why I think we need to say it's mostly someone who needs to be playing more. Like when Zach Randolph was putting up 20/10 per 36, then the Blazers finally played him minutes when they were down 3-0 against the Mavericks and nearly came back to win the series. Latrell Sprewell was considered a star for years but his numbers were average, he just played gobs of minutes. Same with Antoine Walker, etc.

I agree with the esteemed Sauru that it's far easier to proclaim who is "overrated" if only because those are the people you hear about. How many people heard about Ryan Anderson before this season? His career per 36 is 17/8.5 with a 18 PER. Is he overrated or underrated because he's doing 18.8/8.4 and 22.9 PER this year?

[Lamrock]

Nobody picked Tyson Chandler, who didn't make the all-star team despite being the best center in the league this season.

[Sideshow Bob]

I'll go with

PG - Lou Williams
SG - Nick Young
SF - Andre Iguodala
PF - LaMarcus Aldridge
C - Austin Daye

[airBerlin]

Goran Dragic
Evan Turner
Wilson Chandler
David Lee
Marcin Gortat

[Kenny]

I think there could possibly be sub-categories for this discussion. I think a player can still be underrated while getting minutes, simply because they're not talked about or recognised as much as some other players that have the same skill set. The market they play in has a lot to do with how they're rated as well I suppose.

Nobody picked Tyson Chandler, who didn't make the all-star team despite being the best center in the league this season.

I didn't pick him because I thought he was well recognised for his role in the championship team. Still, to be snubbed as an All-Star reserve implies he's still very much underrated.

[airBerlin]

despite being the best center in the league this season.

comments like this make him OVERrated.

[Kenny]

David Lee

[benji]

simply because they're not talked about or recognised

Again, we haven't answered the question "BY WHOM?"

Go back to the Lin example I posited above, is Lin, with only the information you had on January 29th, overrated or underrated?

You posted that Nene and Arron Afflalo are underrated. Yet Nene got $60 million and was widely talked about as one of the top free agent centers. Afflalo got $38 million was also pursued by a number of teams and people like Bill Simmons spent a number of columns on wanting to give him $50 million.

What would talking about Nene and Afflalo more look like? What would recognizing them more look like? Nene's very good, one of the best centers in the league, but he's not the best or near the best and he's not a dominant player with eye-popping numbers this year. Afflalo's a solid perimeter player but there are gobs of those and none of them are near LeBron, Wade, Kobe, etc. in their level of talent so why should they get anywhere near the attention?

Until you go out and set some criteria this is all just arguing with your perception of other peoples perceptions.

[Andrew]

It's certainly difficult to nail down the criteria, especially when the terms underrated and overrated have come to represent and justify personal opinions (or as benji said, your perception of other people's perceptions). benji's question of "by whom?" is also very important here and generally overlooked in underrated/overrated discussions. I'd have to agree that there are subcategories here, different flavours of being underrated and overrated: role players who are overlooked, stars who aren't quite as good as it seems, often-criticised stars who are probably actually a little better than they're given credit for, role players who look better because of the team they're on and everything in between.

[rise]

Lowry
Thornton
Batum
Al Jefferson
Chandler

[CheddahCheese]

Nobody picked Tyson Chandler, who didn't make the all-star team despite being the best center in the league this season.

Really dude? Tyson Chandler is not underrated; he's properly rated. Other than Dirk, he was the reason Dallas won the title last year. And because of his play last year, the Knicks stupidly overpaid him. I love Chandler as much as the next guy, but he's not worth $15 million a year. That's superstar money.

[CheddahCheese]

Like I said on my original post, a good player that has never been selected as an all-star can be qualified as underrated. Regarding Lin - he's properly rated. Nobody's saying he's a top 5 PG, he's just the biggest story of sports right now because he single handedly saved the Knicks from possibly missing the playoffs. Just 'cause he's on the news so much does not mean he's overrated..

[airBerlin]

David Lee

I fail to see your point.
For me, All-Star games are (for the most part) irrelevant when thinking who's overrated and who's underrated.

[benji]

Like I said on my original post, a good player that has never been selected as an all-star can be qualified as underrated.

Yes, but they CAN also be qualified as overrated. It depends on what their rating is compared to their reality.

Nobody's saying he's a top 5 PG

At least 35,000 ESPN visitors think he's the best PG in the entire league: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/fp/flash ... lId=133237

Just 'cause he's on the news so much does not mean he's overrated..

Then what does?