After an offseason packed with trades, free agent signings, and other roster moves, the NBA’s 30 teams set their 15-man squads for the regular season on Monday. We’ll be taking a closer look at those rosters today, starting with the average age of the players on each team.
As a general rule, the league’s older, more veteran teams are the ones we expect to contend for a championship, and that’s mostly the case this year too. The Cavaliers, with an average age of 30 years and four days, are the NBA’s oldest team by a significant margin. No other team has an average age above 29. However, the teams that join the Cavs at that end of the spectrum are title contenders — the Rockets, Warriors, and Spurs all have an average team age above 28.
It’s not always the case that contending teams skew older. The Celtics, for instance, have an average age of just 25 years and 17 days, making them the sixth-youngest team in the NBA. For the most part though, the younger clubs are the ones in the midst of a rebuild or having gone through “The Process” of a rebuild — the Sixers, Lakers, and Bulls are among the NBA’s five youngest teams, with the Suns (24 years, 173 days) topping the list.
For comparison’s sake, while the Cavs’ average age exceeds 30 years, the division-rival Bulls don’t have a single player in his 30s.
The average ages for all 30 NBA teams are listed below, sorted from youngest to oldest. Our list is based on players’ ages as of Tuesday, and we’re separating years and days by a decimal, so Phoenix would be 24.173.
These figures don’t include a team’s two-way players, and don’t include transactions reported or completed since opening-night rosters were set on Monday. So the Hawks‘ signing of 23-year-old Isaiah Taylor isn’t included, and neither is the Nuggets‘ reported swap of 35-year-old Jameer Nelson for 37-year-old Richard Jefferson.
Here’s the full list:
- Phoenix Suns: 24.173
- Philadelphia 76ers: 24.232
- Chicago Bulls: 24.293
- Portland Trail Blazers: 24.317
- Los Angeles Lakers: 24.320
- Boston Celtics: 25.017
- Toronto Raptors: 25.130
- Denver Nuggets: 25.246
- Orlando Magic: 25.311
- Charlotte Hornets: 25.353
- Brooklyn Nets: 25.355
- Sacramento Kings: 26.018
- Detroit Pistons: 26.021
- Milwaukee Bucks: 26.038
- Memphis Grizzlies: 26.079
- Atlanta Hawks: 26.108
- Indiana Pacers: 26.125
- New York Knicks: 26.234
- Miami Heat: 26.274
- Los Angeles Clippers: 26.296
- Utah Jazz: 26.330
- Minnesota Timberwolves: 27.080
- Washington Wizards: 27.098
- Oklahoma City Thunder: 27.139
- New Orleans Pelicans: 27.285
- Dallas Mavericks: 28.114
- Houston Rockets: 28.148
- Golden State Warriors: 28.262
- San Antonio Spurs: 28.298
- Cleveland Cavaliers: 30.004
Information from Basketball-Reference was used in the creation of this post.