NBA Today: 5 Most overrated players in the league right now

#1 Kyrie Irving

Kyrie Irving

Kyrie Irving tops this list and it’s a tough choice but deserving for all the wrong or right reasons. He is a splendid ball-handler, an elite finisher, and a mega-talent in the NBA but he is not a team player. He left Cleveland after having made the NBA Finals with the side for three consecutive seasons, stating, “I think it was the best move for my career.”

So, in the summer of 2017, he was traded to the Celtics and had to watch the 2018 playoffs from courtside due to a knee injury. What had to hurt even worse, is that the Celtics, where he got traded, were Eastern Conference Finalists in 2018 losing a 6-game series to Cleveland but not before taking a 2-0 series lead.

It meant young talent such as Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, and others were a good nucleus of young talent for Boston to build a franchise around. It had to also hurt that the same team he abandoned a year earlier, by demanding a trade, Cleveland, was back in an NBA Finals for a 4th straight year.

Irving had a chance to lift Boston to new heights in 2018/19. He failed miserably with the Celtics managing to finish 4th in the East. They played a horrible 2nd round series against the Bucks in which Kyrie Irving was a significant underperformer with lackluster defense and poor shot selection.

In what was a rather bold statement, Kyrie claimed that “The young guys don’t know what it takes to be a championship level team.”

Since Irving was an NBA Champion with Cleveland in 2016 it should have fallen to Irving to direct and guide his younger Celtics teammates. Instead, Irving’s commitment to winning had him opt out of his player option with the Celtics and sign a 4-year $141 million deal to play in Brooklyn.