FWIW, according to a Reddit post from three years ago, the 2000-01 Jazz and the 1997-98 Rockets were the oldest at the end of the season at a 32.0 years average. According to to the source below, the Lakers are 30.9 currently, and if all stayed the same would not be the oldest, but that source is irrelevant to what will be the average age at the end of the season and it's not clear if it's up-to-date. Check back at the end of the season.
https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/transactions/composition_search
Lies, white lies, and statistics. What is the average age of the key players on the Lakers? LeBron, Rondo, Howard, Melo, Ariza, Jordan, Davis, and Westbrook?
Jordan sat the entire playoffs last season despite being available. He appears behind Davis, Gasol, and Howard for minutes at the 5 spot. More irrelevant than key. Might be the same for Rondo behind LBJ, Westbrook, and Nunn for minutes as a PG. "Playoff" Rondo sat for 6 playoff games and is going to have to beat out Nunn for PT. Ariza played went 7 for 23 in 4 playoff games. He'll get minutes for his defense, but none of these three are keys at this point in their careers. Just names.
I think this 30.9 is still including The Greek freaks brother at 23 because he is still listed on the roster. If he is taken off it gets them somewhere around 31.5. But I guess more importantly the only guys that will play any minutes for them under 28 are monk and tucker? That is pretty insane. By comparison the average age of the entire Celtics roster is 26. It will be really interesting to see how these guys hold up at their ages.
Nunn is going to play a bunch. He is 26.
Spurs won a title with a pretty old team. I mean their rotation during that 13-14 playoff run was 37, 36, 33, 31, 31, 29, 27, 27, 26, 25, 22. Not quite as old and Kawhi at 22 certainly helped a lot, but overall a lot of old men in the rotation including TD and Manu at 37 and 36 respectively.
For the Lakers it will come down to health in the playoffs. They are obviously going to miss games during the regular season, but they actually have enough depth that I don't think they will fall off a cliff at any point during the season, but if they enter the playoffs healthy, they will be incredibly difficult to beat for the simple fact that they have 2 of the 10 best players in the world surrounded by a lot of depth. James and Davis have to be and just as importantly, stay, healthy though.
I mean Leonard was literally the finals mvp of that team right? If the lakers had a guy in their roster that was capable of that it would be a reasonable comparison. Green, bellinelli, mills all played decent Minutes and were all in mid 20’s at that point. Nunn and tucker seem like only guys under 28 that will play significant minutes. I’m also not positive Dunn is going to be a great fit with Westbrook or Lebron. Really is a pretty unprecedented roster construction for any team (as evidence that it may literally be the oldest team in nba history). Seems like a real strange thing to try and argue with. It’s an objective fact.
Davis is 28 though and a regular season MVP candidate (not just a young guy who played well defensively for 5 games). And Lebron is a lot better than anyone on that Spurs team. That is the real difference with the Lakers and Spurs. The Lakers have better top end talent. A bit older, but still incredible.
My question was literally whether they were the oldest team in league history (a bit older is understatement of the year). It seems like this is a hard thing to track and I think the two way contracts are skewing the average when this is actually oldest team of modern era. That alone is a very interesting discussion point and very relevant to whether they could implode. And from the age angle of it the spurs were a much more normal team. If you want to get off into a separate topic comparing the 2013-2014 Spurs teams talent level to the lakers for some reason please make a different thread.
I just used the Spurs because they were a recent team led by players older than 35 that won the title.
But as has been mentioned in the post you first responded to the 01 Jazz were older and won 53 games in the regular season. They did lose in the 1st round of the playoffs to another 53 win team in Dallas.
That Jazz team's playoff rotation was 38, 37, 36, 35, 34, 32, 31, 30, 27, 27, 25 (19 year old Stevenson played 8 minutes in 1 game). The best players on the team were 37 and 38.
The 98 Houston team was also very old with a main rotation of 38, 35, 35, 35, 34, 34, 30, 29, 26 (they also had 2 24 year olds and a 40 year old play in the playoffs). They were a 41 win team and lost 3-2 to the 62 win Jazz that went to the Finals. They were only slightly younger the next year when they went 31-19 and ended up losing to the Lakers in the 1st round.
The thing about the Lakers old guys though, is aside from Lebron, they haven't really missed many games recently. Dwight, Carmelo, and Westbrook were all basically healthy last year and have been for several seasons. Even Gasol and Rondo haven't missed much time. Frankly the least healthy Laker has been the guy just starting his prime in Davis. And the Lakers were a lot younger last year, and it didn't do them any good. They were awful without Lebron and Davis, and all those young fresh legs did nothing. The Lakers just need their top guys to be healthy, nothing else really matters.
I’m genuinely confused why are you mentioning three teams from 20 years ago or longer that lost in the first round? If the lakers lost in the first round this year they would absolutely consider it a disaster/implosion. How is this relevant to a discussion on whether a super team could implode in 2021-2022? Or are you arguing they will implode because the previous old teams all lost in the first round. Your seemingly only relevant point is that howard, Gasol, rondo, Carmelo have been relatively healthy. I could just see them falling off a cliff.
Those guys already fell off a cliff. They are role players.
The 3 players that aren't role players though are Lebron, Davis, and Westbrook. Only Lebron is really old. Davis is injury prone. Westbrook is older, but still back end of prime.
Those 3 guys measure up quite well from a talent perspective to every team in the league. Because:
Lebron is a top 3 player
Davis is a top 10 player (arguably top 5)
Westbrook is a top 40 player (you could probably argue as high as top 25, but I think he is somewhere in the 30's)
When you have talent like that, it doesn't matter if they old because they are still talented. Injuries are a different matter and those guys are probably more prone to injury then most teams top talent (but the most injury prone person in that group is still in his 20's). You can also certainly question the fit of Westbrook with the other 2, but Schroder fit just fine and Schroder is a lesser version than Westbrook from pretty much everywhere (Schroder is a better 3 point shooter, but not good enough for it to really matter).
I just don't buy the age argument as having any relevance because the top 3 players are still really really good and that is what matters. Having some older role players isn't going to alter the team's trajectory at all. In fact, you could probably argue that having more experienced role players is probably a benefit come playoff time.
For Westbrook especially, and LeBron someday soon maybe, don't you think that cliff is going to sneak up on them pretty quickly?
I imagine you had Westbrook in the 30's based off last year? Even though he's been relatively healthy, dude has had multiple knee surgeries and doesn't play a style or position that age well. When do you think he's going to fall off? He's of the age (32-33) when it starts to happen.
Everybody has different situations, so this isn't meant to be a like-for-like comparison, but look at somebody like Kemba. ESPN had him #17 going into 2020, #48 last year, and who knows if he'll even be ranked this year.
Al Horford went from #37 going into '20 to unranked going into '21. Blake Griffin went from #23 to #65, and DeMar DeRozan went from #46 to #82 in the same time frame. Carmelo went from #31 (going into '17) to #64 (going into '18) to unranked (going into '19). Probably see something similar from Iverson or Scottie Pippen if I could find rankings from that time.
(Using ESPN pre-season rankings just for simplicity, and for a neutral-ish 3rd party).
I don't know if it will be this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a huge drop off from Westbrook soon.