The Annual Worst NBA Contracts Draft With Joe House and Wosny Lambre

What It Covers

Bill Simmons, Joe House, and Wosny Lambre conduct their annual worst NBA contracts draft, selecting the most egregious player salaries across the league. The episode covers 24 contracts ranging from Joel Embiid's $243.5 million extension to role players like Dorian Finney-Smith, framed against the NBA's new second apron rules that have reduced the volume of truly catastrophic deals.

Key Questions Answered

• •Injury history as contract predictor: When evaluating big-man extensions, cross-reference career games played against historical comparables. Joel Embiid at 485 games played mirrors Bill Walton (468), Yao Ming (486), and Ralph Sampson (456) — all players whose bodies never cooperated long-term. Centers in the high-400s to low-500s career games played represent a statistically reliable warning sign that production will not scale with contract length or dollar value.
• •Second apron rules reshape roster construction: The NBA's new second apron restrictions have meaningfully reduced the number of truly terrible contracts league-wide. Teams can now afford roughly two max-level players before facing severe roster-building penalties. This structural constraint means evaluating contracts requires weighing not just player quality but opportunity cost — paying one player $48 million annually eliminates flexibility to surround them with complementary pieces at competitive salaries.
• •Playoff game scarcity as career value signal: A player averaging 20-plus points per game across 600-plus career games who has appeared in fewer than 26 playoff games represents a historically unique failure. Zach LaVine has played exactly four career playoff games across 12 seasons — a combination that has never occurred among the 63 players meeting those statistical thresholds, making playoff participation a concrete metric for evaluating whether offensive production translates to winning.
• •Defensive impact calibration in MVP voting: Wembanyama's defensive influence — altering or deterring approximately 30 shots per game in person — challenges standard MVP frameworks that weight offensive production more heavily. When a player operates at an extreme outlier level on one side of the ball, conventional statistical models undervalue total impact. Tracking shot alterations, defensive possessions affected, and opponent shot-quality changes provides a more complete picture than points, rebounds, and assists alone.
• •Extension timing creates stranded assets: Teams repeatedly extend players before confirming sustainable performance, then immediately attempt to trade them. Toronto extended Jakob Poeltl for four years at $123 million, then tried trading him before the extension even activated. The pattern — Sacramento with Keegan Murray (six years, $151 million), Chicago with Patrick Williams (four years, $72 million) — suggests front offices systematically overweight draft position and prior peak performance when setting extension timelines.
• •Role player inflation versus replacement cost: Multiple contracts in the $18–25 million annual range cover players whose on-court function can be replicated at a fraction of the cost. The Celtics deploy Keita Bates-Diop and Luka Garza on combined salaries near $3 million while the Lakers acquired Deandre Ayton for $8 million annually. Before extending role players, teams should benchmark against available scrap-heap alternatives, particularly wings and non-elite centers where the talent pool remains deep relative to demand.
• •Usage hierarchy transparency as roster signal: The Lakers publicly acknowledging LeBron James as their third usage option behind Luka Doncic and Austin Reeves reflects a broader principle — aging stars who can no longer create off the dribble against playoff defenses should be repositioned as screen-setters, spot-up shooters, and secondary playmakers. Teams that make this adjustment explicitly, rather than gradually, preserve offensive efficiency and allow younger creators to operate without deference constraints distorting shot selection and pace.