Report calls Alex Caruso the most underrated player in the NBA

Caruso doesn’t get enough credit for what he does.

The NBA is a league driven by superstars. Whether it was Magic Johnson or Larry Bird in the 1980s or Michael Jordan in the 90s, star power has always been a huge factor in the success of the NBA and its teams. However, for every star that gets the spotlight, many others make an impact on their teams, but don't get talked about often. Chicago Bulls defensive ace Alex Caruso was recently pointed out as being such a player.

Not enough credit

When talking about defensive impact, most conversations favor big men of the NBA. For this reason, the Defensive Player of the Year award most often goes to centers such as Jaren Jackson Jr. and Rudy Gobert. However, Caruso is the rare guard who's proven to be just as disruptive on the defensive end, as evidenced by his inclusion into the All-NBA Defense team last season.

"Alex Caruso is one of the rare players at his position—like Smart, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White and a handful of others—who can change the course of a game defensively. The problem: He doesn't get nearly enough recognition for it," Grant Hughes wrote.

Defensive impact

Despite having numerous players on the team whose specialty is offense—which is a nice way of saying they play little defense—the Bulls still finished with the league's fifth-best defense. And the reason for this? Alex Caruso.

"Consider the mystery of last year's Chicago Bulls, who somehow finished with the No. 5 defense despite starting notable sieves Nikola Vucevic, DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine. The Bulls managed that feat largely because they held opponents to 106.5 points per 100 possessions when Caruso was on the floor. When he sat, that number leapt to 112.5," Hughes explained.

The eye test may not always do justice to the kind of pesky defense that Caruso plays on a game-to-game basis, but the numbers do.

"With steal rates in or above the 90th percentile five years running (and even a 98th percentile block rate last year!) and the most deflections per 36 minutes in the league (among players with at least 1,000 minutes played), Caruso causes more trouble than most defenders—at any position," Hughes added.