By Michael PinaJan. 6, 2:28 pm UTC • 11 min

I hate to kick the new year off with a splash of negativity, but, alas, here we are, identifying players who have improved the least this NBA season. Some are testaments to the old axiom “Growth is not linear,” stumbling up from the ground floor of what can still be a promising career. Others are suffering through an age-related decline that’s too steep to ignore. 

This list includes veterans who just can’t seem to vanquish a statistical plateau that their talent/situation suggests they should and frustrating disappointments who’ve regressed without any rhyme or reason. Together, ranging from slight setbacks to egregious fiascos, they all represent pressing concerns for the teams on which they play. So, without further ado, here they are, in no particular order. 

Tyrese Haliburton, Indiana Pacers

In the NBA, it’s impossible to disentangle consistency from stardom. A franchise player cannot be a franchise player if he doesn’t look like a franchise player every single night. Haliburton—a 24-year-old coming off his first All-NBA season as the league’s assist leader and face of a team that made the Eastern Conference finals—has been everything but consistent. 

After a 10-15 start, the Pacers have battled back to an 18-18 record but still look nothing like the threat they were a year ago. That’s largely because Haliburton fluctuates between rapturous and invisible. He’s scored at least 25 points in just nine games, and has failed to reach double digits in seven; his true shooting percentage has been below league average (57.4) in 17 of his 36 games. 

With the second-largest drop in true usage rate (10.1 percentage points) from last season to this one, a streaky outside shot, and an at-rim shot frequency that’s half what it was in 2023-24, it’s worth wondering whether Haliburton will ever recapture the halcyon days when he regularly looked like Steve Nash 2.0. That’s … concerning. His resistance on the defensive end rivals that of a flower petal, and while he’s averaging three more minutes per game than last season, he’s also averaging three fewer potential assists. 

Haliburton’s peak remains untouchably high. Indiana’s offense still suffers without him, and some of the statistical downshift is thanks to what the Pacers did to their roster since Pascal Siakam was acquired (a good call) and Buddy Hield was traded away (a mistake). Reducing Haliburton’s responsibility should increase his efficiency. Instead, for an organization that makes most of its personnel decisions with his strengths and weaknesses in mind, the lows are a hellscape. If the front office and coaching staff don’t know what they’re getting each night, it’s akin to building something on quicksand. Even though he hasn’t missed a single game this season, there’s a decent chance Haliburton won’t make the All-Star team.

Terry Rozier, Miami Heat

The Heat employ a couple of candidates for this column. Bam Adebayo is having a strangely inconsistent season, and Jaime Jaquez Jr. has—to put it kindly—not made the leap Miami was counting on. But despite being the fifth-oldest player on the roster, Rozier is the most (least?) deserving; his true usage rate has made the steepest drop (11.6 percentage points) in the league from last season. 

Some of that can obviously be explained by the much larger role he had on the Charlotte Hornets before Miami gave up a first-round pick to get him at the 2023-24 deadline. But Rozier still played 30 games with the Heat last season, and his assist rate is down 8.3 percentage points from just that stretch. (It’s half of what it was on the Hornets.) This is rough. Rozier was supposed to alleviate the offensive burden on an aging (and increasingly reluctant) Jimmy Butler, an overextended Adebayo, and a version of Tyler Herro who’s even more potent working off the ball than he is with it in his hands. 

Instead, for the past month, Rozier has been an inconsistent chucker off the bench and has stuck in the corner far too often (while being one of the worst high-volume corner 3-point shooters in the league). His inability to adapt as a third, fourth, or fifth option (against defenses that can’t pay him as much attention as they used to) has crippled a team that craves the dynamic impression he used to make. 

Mike Conley, Minnesota Timberwolves

This hurts to write. Everyone loves Conley. Nobody wants to see him struggle. But it’s possible his days of stiff-arming Father Time may be just about over. Now 37 years old, with over 35,000 minutes on his odometer, Conley shouldn’t still be in the NBA. But he is, largely thanks to the past couple of seasons spent as a critical source of relief for a Timberwolves team that was desperate for his steady hand. He was efficient, calm, and still good for a winning play when Minnesota needed one. This season, though, it’s impossible to overlook just how creaky Conley appears, or how inept the team’s offense is when he’s on the court. Before Minnesota’s loss against the Thunder on New Year’s Eve, Chris Finch was asked about his starting lineup’s struggles. He cited Conley by name: “We need Mike Conley to step up and be a little bit more aggressive as a scorer in that unit.”

Outside the arc, he’s been fine. Inside it, he’s fallen off a cliff, currently ranking dead last in 2-point field goal percentage among all qualifying players. That trusty right-handed floater is nearly extinct. When combined with defensive shortcomings that still make him an overt target all over the floor, it’s hard to justify a substantial role for him at the end of games, exacerbating issues for the league’s very worst crunch-time offense. (Last season, Conley’s effective shooting percentage in the fourth quarter was 59.2. Right now, it’s 25 percent! He has yet to score a single point in the clutch this season.)

The decline isn’t shocking, but it has been swift enough to really hamper a roster that has very little depth at point guard and is (still!) desperate for the composure Conley could once breathe into whatever team he played for. 

Patrick Williams, Chicago Bulls

Williams is 23 years old and a few months into his fifth season, which doubles as the first of a $90 million contract extension that runs through 2029. The Bulls obviously thought they were investing in someone whose immense physical gifts would eventually translate into reliable, game-changing production. Instead, on a team that’s transformed itself in ways that should cater to Williams’s theoretical skill set—i.e., faster with more spacing—he’s flatlined. 

By essentially replacing DeMar DeRozan with a pair of brilliant, pass-first guards (Josh Giddey and Lonzo Ball), the Bulls have gone from one of the league’s slowest, more antiquated offensive attacks to a 3-point-loving track-and-field team. On paper, this looks like a blessing for Williams. On the court, he’s reacted to Chicago’s stylistic renovation by becoming one of the least efficient shooters in the entire league, and his minutes, shots, free throws, points, and usage have all plateaued. Remarkably, Williams has missed more shots at the rim than he’s made. 

It’s gotten so bad that defenses are happy to let their centers roam off Williams and treat him as a complete non-threat, even though he had made 41 percent of his 3s coming into this season and is now launching more per 100 possessions than ever before. Sometimes he capitalizes on the disrespect. 

But more often than not, this strategy stifles Chicago’s offense and helps explain why it’s so much more efficient in the half court when Williams is on the bench. 

He’s also never had much of an off hand, and according to Sportradar, he is generating only 0.64 points per chance on drives going left (good for 206th out of 209 players who’ve logged at least 30 drives this season). Confidence is scarce in these plays.

This doesn’t mean Williams is a lost cause who will never break through and impact winning. (Just look at De’Andre Hunter’s Sixth Man of the Year campaign!) But for him to stagnate at 23 years old—in an environment that creates more advantages—doesn’t inspire a ton of hope. 

Jonathan Kuminga, Golden State Warriors 

I considered taking Kuminga off this after watching him throw down what might be the most violent dunk of the season on Christmas Day. The pair of 34-point outings that followed also didn’t hurt. Neither did a recent win against the Sixers, which was packed with snappy decisions that illustrate exactly who Kuminga needs to be (on the team he currently plays for). 

But then I remembered every other Warriors game I’ve watched over the past couple of seasons, and, well, no Least Improved Players list would be worth its salt if it didn’t at least mention Golden State’s 6-foot-8, hyper-athletic, perpetually dissatisfied 22-year-old. 

Zooming out on a year’s worth of evidence, it’s hard to think of another player whose view of himself is further apart from what his organization sees. The Warriors want Kuminga to fit into a successful style of play that’s nothing without selfless inclination. “We have Steph Curry on our team, so pass the ball. Move the ball,” Steve Kerr said a couple of weeks ago. “This is how we’ve played for 10 years, and it’s important for our young players to understand. We don’t need contested 17-footers with 12 on the shot clock.”

Kuminga, meanwhile, wants to get paid the type of money that’s reserved for players who are more than a cog in their team’s system. (The Warriors declined to offer him a maximum contract extension during the offseason.) To earn anything close, he must score a bunch of points, independent of what’s happening around him. But in Golden State, the mismatched priorities between a desperate, aspiring contender and its high-upside, stubborn, young talent have created an awkward situation that borders on toxic. To make matters worse, Kuminga suffered a sprained ankle on Saturday night and is scheduled to get an MRI.

Kuminga’s 1.07 points per shot attempt currently put him in the 19th percentile at his position (last season he was in the 71st percentile), and he’s barely making half of his 2-point shots after hovering around 60 percent for most of his career. Not good! With more opportunities to run pick-and-roll, he’s the 10th-least efficient pick-and-roll ball handler in the league (minimum 100 plays, per Sportradar). 

Without tangible progress as a playmaker—hence the Warriors’ trade for Dennis Schröder—Kuminga also hasn’t gotten better shooting the 3-ball, which, to be fair, makes him a tricky fit even if he did everything else Kerr asked. Golden State’s spacing issues are apparent when he shares the floor with other players who don’t stretch the defense. Here’s one of Golden State’s approximately 57 shot-clock violations from its NBA Cup quarterfinal loss against the Rockets, in which Dillon Brooks completely ignored Kuminga in the weakside corner. 

In a results-oriented world of bravado and unbridled confidence, a little self-awareness goes a long way. Just a thought, but if Kuminga actually played how the Warriors think he should, he would not only start but also have the lucrative extension he sought before the season began. 

Kerr doesn’t start him, though. And the Warriors didn’t give him a new contract. Coming into this season, the relationship between Kuminga and Golden State felt make-or-break. Instead of establishing himself as a long-term fixture who could help shoulder some of the offensive responsibility assumed by Curry for over a decade, Kuminga hasn’t gotten significantly better in ways that make you wonder whether he ever will. 

Jalen Green, Houston Rockets

The Rockets are an imposing, respectable, ascending team in desperate need of an All-Star-level perimeter scorer who can streamline efficient looks for himself and others … a.k.a. exactly what they thought Green would be when they drafted him second in 2021. Digest Green’s game in small bites, and it’s aesthetically spectacular. He’s a bewildering track star with pristine footwork and two propellers where his shoulder blades should be. But when you consume it as an entire meal, most of the production is a mirage.

Green’s fourth year is shaping up to be what his (discouraging) third year was: about 20 points per game with volatile shooting splits. He’s still an inconsistent with atrocious shot selection. Right now, his true shooting percentage is not only the worst of his career but also second to last among all players who take at least 15 shots per game (minimum 20 He launches 5.9 shots after seven or more dribbles, which is more than Steph Curry and Kyrie Irving—a troubling mark that’s even higher than last season.

The type of player Green—who turns 23 in February—can hopefully still be is highly coveted and extremely rare. The type of player he’s yet to evolve from, though, looks like Donovan Mitchell’s understudy. There are highs in that show but so much exasperation too. He’s yet to shake the tunnel vision Houston badly needs him to stray from. There are too many examples to count of Green taking a contested, midrange pull-up while a teammate stands wide open one pass away.

All the Rockets can do for the rest of this season is wait for an epiphany. Until then, Green’s assist-to-usage ratio is currently in the second percentile at his It illustrates a critical dilemma here: This is a guard who is wildly inefficient and does not make anyone around him better. 

There are things Green does well, and tantalizing flashes make it very hard to abandon him altogether. The three-year, $105.3 million commitment Houston made a few months ago is somewhat understandable. But the reasons why that deal was three years instead of five outweigh most of his (fleeting) potential to be great. If the Rockets don’t see tangible improvement between now and the end of this season, there’s a good chance Green will be wearing a different jersey this time next year. 

Scoot Henderson, Portland Trail Blazers

It’s hard to be the most disappointing player in your draft class two years in a row. But despite expectations taking a downward turn after his abysmal rookie season, Henderson has somehow done it. He isn’t worse, per se, but it’s hard to go lower when you’re already in the basement. In his rookie season, Scoot committed more turnovers per 100 possessions than anybody else and had the lowest true shooting percentage among all qualified players. His jumper is still so broken that there was one play earlier this season in which he caught a pass with less than two seconds on the shot clock and the nearest defenders still decided to close out on his teammate:

And he still makes poor decisions with the ball, throwing passes into empty space and getting sped up when defenders apply pressure:

No active player in the first four years of their career has seen a bigger drop in their true usage rate, per BBall Index, than Henderson this season, a damning development for a 20-year-old on a bad, rebuilding roster who was drafted to be the franchise point guard. He still thinks too much and doesn’t seem to trust his own athleticism in spots where he absolutely should:

Scoot has been on the court for just eight final buzzers this season. Last Thursday’s loss against the Lakers was the first time he played the entire fourth quarter. He’s still young, and there’s still quite a bit of time before Portland has to make a real financial decision about Henderson’s future. But the Dennis Smith Jr. vibes are starting to swell. Once upon a time, he was a can’t-miss prospect who accelerated Damian Lillard’s exit from Portland. And if he can’t space the floor or be trusted with the ball in his hands, it’s hard for Chauncey Billups to play him with other members of Portland’s core, knowing their development will be affected by the strain Henderson’s flaws put them through. 

Honorable mentions: Keegan Murray, Kyle Kuzma, Brandin Podziemski, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Paul George, Wendell Carter Jr.

Michael Pina

Michael Pina is a senior staff writer at The Ringer who covers the NBA.