We like to name a lot of players that we think are overrated or that are being paid like number one guys without being one. Rudy Gay, Joe Johnson, Andre Iguodala, Danny Granger, Carmelo Anthony, etc etc. But it's very easy to take everything outside of its context and forget everything else that was going on that led to them being the players that they are now with the contracts that they have now. 

For the most part, all of these guys were just like the guys we have now at the very start: promising young players. What happened in between? Their teams were never able to get the prerequisite talent to add to their teams. These guys then had to be number one guys simply because they were the best guys on the team. They had to keep being the number one guy for so long and had to keep putting up number one guy-like stats that they eventually got paid like a number one guy. Is it any fault of their own that they are paid that much because no one else on their team was better?

This is something that could very easily happen to us. Right now Brook Lopez is our best player. Should he be the number one guy on a team? That much is unclear. But right now he is, because we don't have a lot of other options. And safe to say that by next year, he will be paid like it. Will he live up to the contract? I don't know. But if he doesn't, well you know that other people are going to be saying about him. The exact same things we say about these other players