Home Basketball Ex-teammate Klay Thompson defends him after being called the ‘most overpaid’ player in the NBA

Ex-teammate Klay Thompson defends him after being called the ‘most overpaid’ player in the NBA

Basketball — 09/07/2023

An ex-Golden State Warrior is fuming over a recent rating released by a major basketball website, which places his former Splash Brother teammate among “the most overpaid players” in the NBA.

After HoopsHype published a list of the worst contracts in NBA history, Juan Toscano-Anderson criticized the website for placing four-time champion Klay Thompson on the list. Toscano-Anderson, who most recently played for the Utah Jazz, was a teammate of Thompson’s at Golden State from 2020 to 2022, during which time the two won a championship.

HoopsHype employed a sеcrеt formula known as “Real Value,” which attempts to strike a balance between an NBA player’s actual contract and his on-court performance and any pertinent underlying statistics.

After John Wall and Gordon Hayward, Thompson was named as the third most overpaid player ever on the ranking.

“The problem, at least for this exercise, is that (Thompson’s) game — even before the injuries—was never well-liked by analytics,” the paper stated. Thompson was barely a Top 50 player according to the analytics even in 2015-16, perhaps his finest season ever, when he made 3rd Team All-NBA and was a part of the 73-9 Warriors team.

HoopsHype also notes that Thompson’s five-year, $190 million contract with Golden State looks like a significant overpay in light of his ACL and Achilles injuries, which prevented him from playing basketball for two full seasons. But Thompson has long been considered one of the greatest shooters in NBA history, and he had already won three titles before signing the deal (which is now in its last year). In addition, Thompson will be an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2019, which will allow him to play for any NBA team in 2024. It’s hard to picture the 33-year-old in any other uniform, and he’s already talking about trying to win his sixth NBA title with the Warriors this year.

This fall in San Francisco, fans can look forward to an exciting backcourt including Thompson, Stephen Curry, and Chris Paul. With this seasoned trio and stalwart power forward Draymond Green, the Warriors will be in the title Һunt, and Klay Thompson will have another opportunity to “prove” that his $190 million contract was not an egregious overpay.