Last year I read numerous contradictory statements in the NBA press concerning the "youngest" team in the league. Some writers named Golden State the youngest, others labeled the Hawks as the babies of the Association, while still others pointed to the Grizzlies or the Blazers as the least experienced of the bunch. Which team was really the youngest?
Well... that's not exactly the most straightforward question. There are several ways to approach this question. You could simply take an average of the ages for all players on a given team. But how do you account for midseason trades? And should you really count an aging vet on his way out or a rookie who never got off the bench on the same footing as an in-his-prime starter?
The best approach is to weight a player's age by the minutes he actually played. This method ensures that you measure a team's average age based only on which players saw the court. Sum up the product of age and minutes played for all players on a team, and then divide by the total number of minutes that team played:
∑(Player’s minutes * Player’s age) / ∑(Team minutes)
According to this method, the Memphis Grizzlies put the youngest team on the court. Their squad averaged under 24 years old, with youngsters O.J. Mayo, Rudy Gay, Marc Gasol, and Mike Conley leading the team in minutes. Here are the five youngest teams in the NBA last season, weighted by minutes played:
- Memphis - 23.97
- Portland - 24.70
- Oklahoma City - 25.13
- Chicago - 25.65
- Golden State - 25.76
Looking at rankings based on years of NBA experience, rather than pure age, produced a similar ranking, with Miami moving up to fourth, bumping Chicago down a spot.
For completeness sake, the five oldest teams in the NBA were:
- New Orleans - 28.85
- Detroit - 29.07
- Dallas - 29.85
- Phoenix - 30.27
- San Antonio - 31.26
This simple exercise revealed two interesting things about team ages. First, the two NBA finals teams, Los Angeles and Orlando, were ranked sequentially. LA came in 21st overall in average age, at 28.06 years, and Orlando was 22nd, at 28.11 years. Second, the 10 oldest teams in the league all made the playoffs, while only four of the 10 youngest teams made the playoffs.
I have a few ideas on more interesting age-related questions, which I hope to address once I find or compile the necessary data. What is the correlation between age/experience and winning, both last year and historically? Is there some sort of sweet spot in terms of team success? I also want to look at how average age or average years of experience have changed since the NBA instituted the minimum age requirement.
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