When we call NBA players overrated, keep in mind that's a relative term.

Everyone we'll highlight here is better at their job than most of us will ever be at ours. So, what we're really illustrating are the instances in which a player's reputation outstrips his actual value.

This disconnect happens all the time, and for lots of different reasons.

For example, despite a growing understanding that we need to judge players by more than points or rebounds per game, those figures often weigh too heavily on public perception. Conversely, more advanced numbers and even a player's bottom-line impact on team success don't get the attention they deserve.

Another factor: We're slow to adjust to how a player's actual worth measures up against his reputation. Make one All-Star game several years ago, and you're an All-Star forever in the eyes of some.

Keeping that logic in mind, these are the most overrated NBA players of the last five years.

5. Andrew Wiggins

For a few weeks when it mattered more than ever, Andrew Wiggins was the most important two-way wing in the world.

He defended Luka Dončić as well as humanly possible in the 2022 Western Conference Finals and then gave Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown the business in the Finals, all while ratcheting up his rebounding and turning in head-spinning highlights.

There is no chance the 2022 Golden State Warriors win their cherry-on-top championship without Wiggins finding his best self when the stakes were highest.

Other than that, though, the 2014 No. 1 overall pick has looked like the same guy in Golden State who frustrated Minnesota Timberwolves fans for years.

Credit Wiggins for developing into a credible three-point shooter after hitting just 33.2 percent of his treys with the Wolves. But keep in mind the 29-year-old has never once posted a true shooting percentage above the league average, has a negative career Box Plus/Minus (including four of the last five seasons in the red) and owns a 14.5 Player Efficiency Rating (league-average is 15.0) across his last four-plus seasons with the Dubs.

A one-time All-Star with immense physical gifts and the ideal frame for a modern two-way star, Wiggins has mostly graded out as a slightly below-average contributor while coming nowhere close to meeting the ceiling his near-perfect prospect profile suggested was possible.

At least we'll always have those incredible few weeks in 2022.

4. Nikola Vučević

The Chicago Bulls certainly overrated Nikola Vučević when they sent out Wendell Carter Jr., Otto Porter Jr. and a pair of future first-round picks to land him in 2021.

Like the rest of the league, they were infatuated by his reliable double-double averages and developing three-point shot. And in fairness, the veteran big man was a two-time All-Star when the Bulls traded for him.

Under the hood, though, Vučević has mostly been an empty-calorie stat-stuffer, particularly with the Bulls, who never figured out how to replicate the smoke-and-mirrors scheme Orlando used to coax solid defense out of lineups featuring the ground-bound center.

It's nice that his assist rate always hangs around the 90th percentile, and he never turns the ball over, but he's essentially a high-usage offensive piece who can't score efficiently because he never draws fouls, doesn't shoot enough threes and converts his low rate of rim attempts at a middling clip.

The 33-year-old's steady diet of mid-range jumpers is offensive poison, and he's been a catastrophically negative force on defense in three of the last five years.

In hindsight, the Bulls should have seen that last part coming. In his final season with the Magic, their defensive rating plummeted by 8.2 points per 100 possessions when Vučević was on the floor.

At least the Bulls didn't throw good money after bad by handing him a three-year, $60 million extension in the summer of 2023.

Oh, wait...

3. Deandre Ayton

We don't technically get to count Deandre Ayton's rookie season because it falls outside our "last five years" window, but no analysis of the center's overrated status would be complete without mentioning he was a No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 draft.

That's right, ahead of Luka Dončić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Trae Young, Jaren Jackson Jr., Mikal Bridges and several others. In a sense, Ayton was overrated before he played a single NBA game.

A third-place finish in Rookie of the Year voting, complete with averages of 16.3 points, 10.3 rebounds and 0.9 blocks, kindled hope he could develop into a franchise center. But his production has never really been all that different from those rookie levels, and his career figures of 16.7 points, 10.5 rebounds and 1.0 blocks show the lack of growth.

Ayton's high-usage, "meh" efficiency profile is a lot like Vučević's, except he's nowhere near as good of a facilitator and is almost as allergic to drawing contact. Ayton's refusal to dunk the ball or attack the rim is among the most maddening individual traits in the league.

Despite good hands, quick feet and plenty of lift, the 26-year-old has ranked in or above the 98th percentile in mid-range attempt frequency among bigs in each of the last three years.

Somehow, the Indiana Pacers saw this profile and decided it was worth a maximum four-year contract worth $133 million in July 2022. Clearly in asset-preservation mode, the Phoenix Suns determined that was a number they needed to match.

Following a trade to the Portland Trail Blazers last year, Ayton is now putting up similarly empty numbers in obscurity, where he'll continue to coast on his draft pedigree and counting stats.

2. Ben Simmons

We're all at fault for Ben Simmons still landing on this list. Every time we fawn over offseason workout videos that show the former No. 1 overall pick (that makes three in our five-man list) sweating it out and refining his jumper, we become part of the problem.

Simmons was once a legitimate star. In 2019-20, he was an All-NBA third-teamer and finished fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting. The following season, he repeated as an All-Defensive first-teamer, checked in at No. 12 in MVP voting and climbed all the way up to second in Defensive Player of the Year.

The advanced metrics backed up the accolades, as he rated in the 94th and 92nd percentiles in Dunks and Threes' catch-all Estimated Plus/Minus.

We all know what happened in that 2021 postseason, when Simmons' years-long refusal to develop a jumper and fear of shooting free throws rendered him useless on offense. The capper was a play all Philly fans remember, when he passed up a fourth-quarter dunk in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals because the mighty Trae Young was protecting the rim.

The three years after that were essentially lost, as injuries, mental health and a perceived unwillingness to play limited Simmons to a total of 57 completely ineffective games.

It's easy to understand the 28-year-old's former appeal. There aren't many 6'10" point guards who can defend multiple positions and single-handedly juice up a team's transition attack. But the warts—shooting, competitiveness, throw in durability, too—have always been there.

If there's a simple definition of "overrated," it has to be something along the lines of "not as good as people seem to think."

That's Simmons, whose formerly elite production still has too many observers convinced he can be what he once was.

1. James Harden

James Harden lands here despite one of the seasons in his sample registering as objectively spectacular.

During his final full year with the Houston Rockets in 2019-20, he led the league in scoring at 34.3 points per game and finished third in MVP voting. That was no big deal for him at the time; he'd been among the top 10 for that award every year since 2012-13, winning once and ranking in the top five six times.

However, the four years since then have been one long downward spiral.

Shuttling between the Rockets, Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers and LA Clippers, Harden's numbers have declined across the board. He's been disruptive, unavailable and in increasingly poor shape during a span that has included no fewer than three trade requests.

Nobody has left more teams worse off than he found them over the last half-decade than the 34-year-old, yet he's returned huge value in trade every time he's been moved.

The Nets paid three first-round picks and four swaps to get Harden from the Rockets after his first trade demand, perhaps a sensible price at the time. In return, he gave Brooklyn a grand total of 80 games across two years before he asked out again.

Undeterred by his lack of availability and quick souring on the Nets, the 76ers coughed up two more firsts and Ben Simmons.

The Clippers offloaded two first-rounders (one via the Oklahoma City Thunder) and an additional swap to onboard Harden after an ugly holdout in Philadelphia.

That's an overwhelming amount of positive value for a player who isn't anywhere close to what he was with the Rockets and cannot be trusted to stay satisfied wherever he happens to be.

Oh, and the Clippers figured this past offseason that handing Harden another guaranteed $70 million was sensible, even while letting Paul George get away over money.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.