It was this past summer that Gordon Hayward announced his retirement from the sport of basketball. Selected with the ninth pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, the 34-year-old Hayward went on to play 14 seasons in the NBA. He certainly was a very good player, and he was named an All-Star while with the Utah Jazz in the 2016-17 season.
Unfortunately, the latter part of his career was marred by injury after he left Utah. While he still had some productive seasons, Hayward just wasn’t on the court frequently enough.
HoopsHype Reveals Their Most Overpaid Player In NBA History
Injury-Plagued Hayward Sits Atop Their List Of Most Overpaid
On Monday, September 30, Frank Urbina of HoopsHype posted an article entitled “The most overpaid NBA players of all time”. According to Urbina, they used Alberto de Roa’s Real Value metric to compare what their value was each season with how much they actually made. Urbina then provided the list of the 30 most overpaid players in NBA history according to de Rosa’s metric.
Atop the list is the recently retired Hayward. After his rookie deal expired, Hayward would sign three more multi-year deals in his career. Two of them were four-year deals for at least $120 million. In 2017, he signed with the Boston Celtics. He declined the player option on his fourth year of his deal, and Boston executed a sign-and-trade with the Charlotte Hornets in 2020. Hayward agreed to a four-year $120 million deal with Charlotte.
As mentioned, injuries played a large role in Hayward’s career especially after he left Utah. In the very first quarter of his very first regular season game with Boston, Hayward fractured his ankle. He would end up missing the rest of the 2017-18 season.
Unfortunately, that was a harbinger of things to come for Hayward. While he never had an injury as serious as that fractured ankle afterwards, he still missed a lot of time due to injury. After appearing in 72 games for Boston in the 2018-19 season, Hayward played no more than 52 in any of his five seasons after.
HoopsHype lists Hayward as having exceeded $282 million in career NBA earnings. The Real Value metric lists what he should have made as $141.66 million. So according to the metric, Hayward made $131 million more than he should have. The metric believes Hayward was overpaid in 10 of his 14 NBA seasons.
In 835 career regular season games, Hayward posted averages of 15.2 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 3.5 assists. Hayward also appeared in 36 career postseason games.
Who Else Was At The Top Of The List For Most Overpaid?
Coming in as the second-most overpaid player in NBA history according to HoopsHype is Klay Thompson. It’s hard to fathom that, being he’s a four-time NBA champion and future Hall of Famer. It makes a little more sense though when you realize he missed the entirety of the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons while making a substantial amount of money.
Rounding out the top ten in order from third to 10th are John Wall, Tobias Harris, Tyson Chandler, Andrew Wiggins, Nicolas Batum, Juwan Howard, Bradley Beal, and Kevin Love.
