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Quickley, Bane Lead NBA’s Most Underpaid Players in 2022-23: Data Viz

Lev Akabas
·5 min read

Big spenders have a leg up in the current NBA. Of the nine teams paying the luxury tax this season, eight made the playoffs and six are among the seven teams that DraftKings currently gives 16-to-1 odds or better to win the title. Last season, no team spent more on player salaries than the eventual champion Golden State Warriors.

Those Warriors paid four starters more than $24 million, but they also got huge contributions from three bench players who each earned less than $2.5 million. Guards Jordan Poole and Gary Payton II both made Sportico’s list of the 10 most underpaid NBA players last season, and forward Otto Porter Jr. averaged nearly 20 minutes per game and made 40% of his threes in the postseason.

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The new collective bargaining agreement, which begins with the 2023-24 season, will reportedly impose harsher restrictions on teams that greatly exceed the luxury tax threshold. Teams whose payrolls eclipse a second tax apron $17.5 million above the threshold won’t be able to use the taxpayer mid-level exception to add a player, nor will they be able to sign buyout players. They will also be prevented from taking back more in salary than they send out in a trade. Under this CBA, finding valuable, cheap role players will be paramount.

Using 2022-23 salaries and an all-in-one metric created by Krishna Narsu of BBall Index, Sportico calculated the 10 NBA players who provided wins over a replacement player at the cheapest cost this regular season. The metric, measuring on-court impact, combines some of the best publicly available advanced stats: EPM, LEBRON, DARKO and BPM-LARAPM (which is Basketball Reference’s BPM used as a prior in luck-adjusted RAPM).

New York Knicks’ third-year guard Immanuel Quickley tops the rankings with 6.25 wins added despite earning just $2.3 million in salary. Quickley, like three other players—Austin Reaves, Herbert Jones and Desmond Bane—also made Sportico’s 2021-22 list.

Quickley was known to be a shooter when he was drafted late in the first round in 2020, but because he was considered undersized, analysts failed to predict his enormous defensive impact. Quickley is alert, active and communicative on that end, smartly anticipating opponents’ plays, and his 6-foot-8 wingspan makes up for his slender 190-pound frame.

According to Cleaning the Glass, the Knicks allow 12.0 fewer points per 100 possessions when Quickley is on the floor versus when he is on the bench. That figure leads the league among players with at least 1,500 minutes, and former Defensive Player of the Year Draymond Green ranks second. Statistics like this can be noisy, but New York’s defense was also 3.6 and 6.1 points better, respectively, with him in the game in each of his first two seasons.

After being included in trade rumors for several months to start this season, Quickley is now a leading candidate for Sixth Man of the Year, but he’s played even better in a larger role. In 21 games as a starter, he’s averaged 22.6 points, 5.1 assists and 5.4 rebounds per game on 60.5% true shooting, and the Knicks are 12-9 in those games despite missing guard Jalen Brunson for many of them.

Bane, the Memphis Grizzlies’ guard, is the league’s second most underpaid player, and has some traits in common with Quickley. Bane was also drafted late in the 2020 first round, and scouts were skeptical of his physical attributes (Bane is one of the only NBA players with a wingspan shorter than his height).

Like Quickley, Bane can also flat-out shoot. Out of 182 NBA players with at least 100 pull-up and 100 catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts over the past three seasons, Bane is one of only six to shoot more than 40% in both categories, ranking fifth and 15th among that cohort, respectively. He uses defenders’ respect for his shot against them, often waiting for them to jump past him, resetting himself with a dribble and then letting it fly. No player has made more threes after exactly one dribble over the past two seasons.

Bane and Quickley have been among the most underpaid players in the NBA for two seasons now, but they won’t be next year. Like all first-round picks entering their fourth season, they are eligible for rookie extensions this offseason.

While the salary cap is expected to rise dramatically, maintaining cap space will be a priority for New York. Last summer, the Knicks locked in R.J. Barrett to a four-year, $107 million contract, but Barrett was the No. 3 overall pick whereas Quickley was No. 25. The latter could get an offer more along the lines of what the Atlanta Hawks gave De’Andre Hunter: four years, $90 million.

Bane’s extension will likely be higher, but its value will depend on how he, and the second-seeded Grizzlies, perform in the playoffs this year. Last February, it was estimated that the Warriors would have to give Poole a contract in the range of $80 million to retain him. Five months later, after winning a ring and averaging 17 points per game in the playoffs, he inked a $130 million deal.

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