Interesting take! Could this also be a cap thing? Harder right now to build a complete team out of solid veterans than first-second contract guys?

I don’t believe it’s a pace issue. I don’t have the numbers handy but I believe the Celtics play at the slowest pace in the league. This is a salary cap issue related to having cost controlled bench and role players. I’m a Celtics fan so I can only comment on their roster with any detail but the Cs basically have no mid tier contracts except for Vouch. They either have max or or near max with Tatum, Brown and White.  Outside of Vouch their highest paid non star is Hauser at around 11m, then Pritchard at around 7m. After that it’s mostly rookie salaries or something around league minimums. I think Queta is slightly above league minimum but not by a lot. 

I think it’s more about smart GMs that draft well than the pace of the game, but I think your logic is sound.

And then there’s the 5th best team casually playing a 41 year old

You can’t just use average roster experience without weighting for minutes played.

For example, Boston’s top 5 guys in playoff minutes in their 2024 title run had an average of 9.8 years of experience. They all played at least 575 minutes, and no one else played more than 355.

They filled the back half of their roster with inexperienced guys, but they rarely played in the playoffs.

I’m not so sure - Pace would be a factor of age not of tenure.   

when you look at the average age of teams, especially by number of minutes played or usage the youngest five teams are the Nets, the wizards, the pelicans, the jazz, and the hornets. 

Note: OKC was the second youngest team the year before they won the championship. 

https://nbaage.com/

Age would be interesting too.

This has nothing to do with pace. This is directly related to expanded roster size going from 12-15 in 2001 and introducing GLeague.

From 2001-2016 more teams started utilizing GLeague.

Then in 2017 teams were allowed to have two 2-way players which expanded the roster to 17.

Then in 2023 you can now have three 2-way players which expanded the roster to 18.

Obviously these players are shuffling betwee the GLeague & NBA roster so they tend to be younger.

Increased pace also means increased injuries, especially when anyone over 30 tries to keep up.

Meanwhile…

This is cool but let’s also add the championship winner for every year, cause you’ve only added the years that support your arguement

yes its why thunder will hav an extended run, with the ability to reload with all those draft picks, whereas san antonio will not because of the enormity of those future contracts for wemby, castle and harper.  they wont be able ro afford all three.

I was actually wondering if there’s a direct correlation with good/physical defensive teams in this era and youth. Not that all young players are good at this style of defense but that this style of defense requires young players.

With Aprons and stuff, could be that old guys are overpaid and rookie contracts are super valuable

This is a good and accurate take.

I agree and it’s definitely not just pace as in possessions like you say but also defending the 3 with hard close outs, and maybe even partly spamming the drive and kick game on offense.

Younger teams with depth/rookie deals can play balls to the wall defense and typically older guys become weaker links when trying to do that or are more prone to injury from that style.

We don’t actually know who the four are. We can guess but the conference finals are the four best teams

I mean we’ll see how this translates to playoffs

I wonder how Brown and Tatum feel being two of the oldest players on their team. They were young when they won their title.

Bring back hand checking.

I am actually kinda interested in experience vs age thing. Like I don’t know as much about other teams but 19 raps had guys like Fred, Norm, and Pascal as major rotation guys who didn’t have much NBA experience but Fred and Norm had 4 years of college experience and Pascal played 2 years of college but was 22 when he was drafted. Like getting upperclassmen in college so you have more experience and/or maturity usually makes sense for later in the draft if your team is trying to get more role players, these 3 of course ended up punching above their draft positions

It’s crazy how much the game has changed. You can really see that shift in team building where vets aren’t as prioritized unless they’re absolute stars because they just can’t keep up with the defensive rotations at this speed.

That should mean careers will be shorter and finish much earlier.

I have noticed this. Games feel like track meets. I don’t like it nearly as much. The NBA is the biggest copy cat league. Pacers success really made every other team take notice.

Watch Charlotte, Memphis and Portland. They run all game and fast. Those young legs are envious.

If weighed by playing time instead of average roster experience this stat would be more meaningful.

Your initial sentence says “Pace is making the best teams a lot younger.”

So like other commenters have said, I want to see age in this chart, not tenure. Three years tenure in 1985 likely means a 26 year old; three years tenure in 2025 likely means a 22-year-old.

Was this constructed with a simple years experience per player, or was it weighted towards players who played more minutes?

For example, a 10-year veteran playing 30 minutes should matter more than 3 rookies playing 10 minutes each. In addition, some of these teams had old 12th man veterans who didn’t see any playing time but were just there to mentor the younger players.

OP couldn’t make the headline “top 5 teams” because we have a dinosaur on our team that would skew the data.

It’s not JUST pace. Yes, it’s absolutely true that faster pace favors younger players and it’s a huge factor. Older stars can absolutely still play, but older role players will have a tougher time keeping up. They will get removed from the league earlier and the average age will be lowered.

It’s also partly because of salary. Older players are more expensive. The introduction of supermax increase the salary of star players even more. That means teams with supermax cannot spend as much on the rest of the team. So a team with an older star will simply be worse off than before. And the recent introduction of the 2nd apron really put a cap on team spending. Young up and comers are incredible bargains. The older teams stopped winning championship beginning with the introduction of the supermax in the latter half of the 10s, with the exception of the Lakers. Having an MVP caliber player at just a regular max contract is an insane amount of advantage. And if you can pay2win because there’s nothing holding teams back other than luxury tax, overpaying older stars isn’t a problem. But now it is a big problem.

Keeping up on the court at this pace is half of it. athleticism, endurance
Playing at this pace for 82+16 without breaking down at any point is the other half. durability

I don’t really know what you think this proves considering none of those teams are even top 10 in pace. Spurs are 12th, OKC is 14th, Pistons are 18th, and Celtics are dead last.

“Pace” has increased due to the plethora of missed 3s. Youngsters prefer 3s bc they dont have run as far and dont have to bang.

This is why it’s time to widen and shorten the court, but not too much