NBA’s Youngest, Oldest Opening Night Rosters

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:

  1. Phoenix Suns: 24.173
  2. Philadelphia 76ers: 24.232
  3. Chicago Bulls: 24.293
  4. Portland Trail Blazers: 24.317
  5. Los Angeles Lakers: 24.320
  6. Boston Celtics: 25.017
  7. Toronto Raptors: 25.130
  8. Denver Nuggets: 25.246
  9. Orlando Magic: 25.311
  10. Charlotte Hornets: 25.353
  11. Brooklyn Nets: 25.355
  12. Sacramento Kings: 26.018
  13. Detroit Pistons: 26.021
  14. Milwaukee Bucks: 26.038
  15. Memphis Grizzlies: 26.079
  16. Atlanta Hawks: 26.108
  17. Indiana Pacers: 26.125
  18. New York Knicks: 26.234
  19. Miami Heat: 26.274
  20. Los Angeles Clippers: 26.296
  21. Utah Jazz: 26.330
  22. Minnesota Timberwolves: 27.080
  23. Washington Wizards: 27.098
  24. Oklahoma City Thunder: 27.139
  25. New Orleans Pelicans: 27.285
  26. Dallas Mavericks: 28.114
  27. Houston Rockets: 28.148
  28. Golden State Warriors: 28.262
  29. San Antonio Spurs: 28.298
  30. Cleveland Cavaliers: 30.004

Information from Basketball-Reference was used in the creation of this post.

View Comments (11)