A few things that have been rattling around in my head during the All-Star break...
During the All-Star Game(s) on Sunday, one of the things that stood out was the disparity in age between the Stars and Stripes teams. I honestly can't remember which was which, but there was one team with LeBron and KD and Kawhi that was significantly older than the other. And it got me thinking about how reliant the league still is on those older players, and whether that's an outlier in NBA history.
To measure this, I went to the All-NBA teams instead of the All-Star teams, both because that's a better measurement of who the best players in the league are, and because there are now so many injury replacements for the All-Star Game that it throws things off.
I gathered the age of every player to make All-NBA since the league expanded to three All-NBA teams back in 1989. And it turns out that the All-NBA teams in recent years are indeed older than they were about a decade ago, but not quite as old as they were in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Click here for a screenshot.
All-NBA teams hit peak age at an average of 29.7 years old in both 1997 and 1998, when guys like Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, and more were making the team in their mid-to-late 30s, and most of the other guys were in their late 20s.
But the age of All-NBA teams quickly declined as we transitioned out of the Jordan era and into the LeBron era. By 2007, the average age of the three All-NBA teams was just 26.1 years old. That's when guys like James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, and Amar'e Stoudemire were in their early 20s and guys like Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, and more were in their late 20s and early 30s.
For the next decade, the average age fluctuated mostly within a band of a year or so. There were high years (2009) and low years (2017), but for the most part the average age stayed pretty consistent. Over the last decade, though, as guys like LeBron, KD, Steph, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and more have aged into their mid-to-late 30s and even 40s for LeBron while guys like Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and more have entered their late 20s and early 30s.
We don't yet know if or when the LeBron-KD-Steph-Harden etc. generation will retire and/or decline enough to not be on All-NBA teams, but the group of guys coming up next will surely drag the average age back down a bit once they do. We have plenty of up-and-coming stars ready to take up the mantle.