The most underpaid players we've seen in the NBA

Last year, we started using a metric called Real Value (developed by our own Alberto De Roa) to estimate how much each player should be paid based strictly on on-court impact. You can learn more about it here.

Since we have all the player salaries data dating back to 1990, we decided to put that info and the Real Value metric to use for a fun exercise: finding out which players have been the most underpaid in the NBA.

Do note that Real Value totally disregards maximum and minimum salary limitations, instead allocating earnings just based on performance on the court. The only constraint is that salaries are distributed taking into account how much NBA teams spent on player contracts each season.

With that, the main takeaway from our research is that, though extremely well compensated, superstars are actually underpaid relative to what they bring to the table. That’s especially true for stars who come out firing from the very start. If you got a young Luka Doncic, that’s the best bargain imaginable right there.

This is not hyperbole: Doncic making $7.6 million in 2019-20 while putting up an All-NBA 1st Team season actually qualifies as the biggest bargain in league history, per our Real Value metric. (He should have made $38.2 million – a mere $30.6 million gap).

Before going ahead with our all-time ranking, a caveat: if you missed games because of injury or any other matter, your Real Value will take a big hit. If you missed all games in a season, your Real Value for that year is $0.

This ranking is based on the difference in dollars between Real Value and career earnings. With way more money available to spread around in the NBA than before, you will see a lot of modern-day players on the list. Eventually, we will make more based on percentages and adjusting to inflation.

Without further ado, here’s our ranking for the most underpaid players on record.