Earlier this week we published our CBS Sports Top 100 NBA player rankings, knowing it's impossible for anyone to agree on these sorts of lists. That's sort of the point of doing them. They're (hopefully civil) conversation starters.
One person might have Victor Wembanyama as the No. 1 player heading into the 2026-27 season, another person may have Nikola Jokić or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but everyone is going to have those guys near the top of their list. For the purposes of this article you're about to read, we're looking for the significant discrepancies between where a player ranked on the CBS Sports final list, which was a creation of cumulative staff votes, and where a player ranked on our individual list. Based on these discrepancies, we published our most underrated players on Wednesday (James Harden was one of them), and now we're polling our writers for their most overrated players (James Harden is again one of them).
See, reasonable minds can disagree. Top 100 ranking: 22 Why that's too high: Mobley is clearly talented and a phenomenal defender, but I have a hard time buying a guy who is a third option offensively as the 22nd best player in the league. Mobley took a step back as a shooter last year and given he's also not a dominant interior player, there are just a few too many limitations to his offensive game for me to place him as high as some of my colleagues.
The defense is fantastic, and he's a productive offensive player, but I am in the "need to see it to believe it" camp with regards to another leap coming from him that puts him into that top-20 conversation. -- Robby Kalland Top 100 ranking: No. 34 Why that's too high: In an alternate universe, Duren might land on the underrated list. He bet on himself last year and made his first All-Star and All-NBA teams. Then he went out and faceplanted in the postseason, getting badly outplayed by Wendell Carter Jr. for much of the first round against the Magic and then mostly being a no-show against the Cavs in the second round.
When Cade Cunningham desperately needed support, Duren's points per game plummeted from 19.5 in the regular season to 10.2 in the playoffs. That decidedly poor performance led to a contentious and protracted contract negotiation between Duren and the Pistons this offseason. Duren eventually signed a new five-year deal worth $200 million, a handsome sum to be sure.
But it was also a far cry from the $287 million max contract for which he was eligible. When your own team is playing hardball with you at the bargaining table and there are reports you might rather play for the Kings because you feel "disrespected," maybe something has gone sideways -- sort of like us ranking him ahead of better bigs such as JJJ, Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. -- John Gonzalez Top 100 ranking: No. 47 Why that's too high: This is not a career-achievement ranking. When we put this list together, nobody factored in Harden's MVP almost a decade ago or his pre-pandemic scoring title, or at least they shouldn't have.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
