Do NBA Players peak at 24 ?

[moiso]

  I'd say that much of the talk about players peaking at those young ages come from people who's understanding of the game doesn't extend very far beyond what they get from a stat sheet. If players peak when they're young, why don't they win the majority of their titles when they're in their early 20s? The answer you'll always hear is "they don't have great teammates".

  While this is frequently true, it should be fairly obvious that when good players are on worse teams they shoulder more of the load and put up, you guessed it, better stats. If anyone's looking for an easy example of this look no further than the Celts. Pierce and Allen and KG didn't all get significantly worse when they were put on the same team, they simply shared the load. The result was a large drop in their stats, which was clearly unrelated to their all aging rapidly in the summer before they were put on the same team.

  Beyond that, you can't just look at raw output to determine how much of an impact a player has on a game. It's not just how many points they score or how many rebounds they get, it's when they get those points and rebounds. It's also all of the little things that they do to help a team win that don't show up directly in a stat sheet. Case in point, loathe though I am to admit it, LeBron. Look at his stats from this year's playoffs and you'd come to the conclusion that he had one of his least productive playoffs and did less to help his team win than in some of his earlier seasons. Watch his impact on the games and you come to a completely different conclusion.

I think players are more willing to blend their talents into the team concept a lot more as they age.  They may be better players at 25 but that doesn't mean that they are ready to do the necessary things to be on a winning team.

[European NBA fan]

It might be true that most players' athelticism peaks at 24 and that this affects their output (win shares etc.).
But what if being a superstar player - as several has suggested - is about more than producing win shares or other advanced stats. Maybe the age of 24 is when a superstar matures and learns that his own talents will only bring him so far. A lot of superstars have massive egos, and need to learn to be team players. Partly because it's a 82 games long season, and if you bring it hard every night, you might not have enough left for the playofss.

[Boris Badenov]

.
  While this is frequently true, it should be fairly obvious that when good players are on worse teams they shoulder more of the load and put up, you guessed it, better stats. If anyone's looking for an easy example of this look no further than the Celts. Pierce and Allen and KG didn't all get significantly worse when they were put on the same team, they simply shared the load. The result was a large drop in their stats, which was clearly unrelated to their all aging rapidly in the summer before they were put on the same team.

Many terrific points by Tim and others, primarily because most of them suggest nice empirical tests.

Just as an example with Tim's point: if the quality of surrounding players affects the age-WS relationship, we should be able to compare players who:
a. Were surrounded by top talent from the get-go
b. Only were surrounded by top talent later in their careers.

Just as a starting point I'll pick Bird and Magic for the (a) group, and Jordan/Lebron for the (b) group.

Bird's WS/48 peaked from age 28-31.
Magic's WS/48 peaked at ages 27 and 29-31.

Jordan's WS/48 peaked at 24, 25, 27 and 32.
Lebron's WS/48 peaked at 24, 25, 27 and 28 (though he could beat an earlier number since his all-time high was this past season).

A few observations from this admittedly unscientific sample:

1. This provides some support for Tim's idea - the guys who started out on good teams have later peaks, because they didn't have the "carrying the load effect" early on.

2. There's also some support here for the LilRip idea that stars have a different trajectory than role players. Caveat: this could just be a selection effect, because stars become stars in part by having longer careers. You'd want to allow for the T-Macs of the world. With a larger sample that would be easy to do.

3. It occurs to me after writing (2) that some of this decline in the *average* comes from injuries. In other words, the average comes down because many players are hurt and out of the league by their late 20s (as Nick noted). So, it's entirely possible that players who stay healthy improve until their late 20s, while players who suffer injuries decline very rapidly, and you are seeing in Berri's numbers the average of those two effects.

Bottom line is that I would not conclude anything from the numbers in the OP. There are just too many reasonable alternative explanations for the result.

I've half a mind to pursue this further. It's a holiday weekend, so maybe I'll have the time.

[BballTim]

But that concept doesn't fit with our need to create story narratives. So lebron didn't win titles not because he was an amazing player on a garbage team but because he had to mature and grow and learn (and have a good team). Same for Jordan I guess (plus pippen, grant, rodman, phil jackson, etc, but shhhh...). I guess Kobe had nothing to learn? Or maybe it was cause shaq was a beast. Duncan was just super ready? Or maybe twin towers with david robinson helped. But i'm sure he would have won titles early if he'd been drafted onto boston, right!?! how about Rondo: Guess he peaked early because that's when he won his title...or he had 3 HOFers. See, team circumstances matter tremendously, but they don't fit with the fun stories.

  It's *not* all narrative. I'm fairly confident that if you stuck the LeBron of 2012 or 2013 in that finals against the Mavs the Heat would have handled them. LeBron's grown as a player. He's made improvements to his game and his understanding of what it takes to be successful. You probably can't pick out the difference by staring at his numbers but his improvement as a player (especially compared to his "peak years") is easy to see when you watch the games.

  The same is true with Rondo. You're obviously correct that he won a title at an early age because he was on a team with great players. But compare his numbers (17/10/10) in 2009 (when he struggled at times) to his numbers (17/7/12) in 2012 when he led the team to game 7 of the ECF. The difference in his numbers was pretty small, the difference in his impact on the game was pretty big. Again, just looking at numbers only gets you so far.

[BballTim]

  I'd say that much of the talk about players peaking at those young ages come from people who's understanding of the game doesn't extend very far beyond what they get from a stat sheet. If players peak when they're young, why don't they win the majority of their titles when they're in their early 20s? The answer you'll always hear is "they don't have great teammates".

  While this is frequently true, it should be fairly obvious that when good players are on worse teams they shoulder more of the load and put up, you guessed it, better stats. If anyone's looking for an easy example of this look no further than the Celts. Pierce and Allen and KG didn't all get significantly worse when they were put on the same team, they simply shared the load. The result was a large drop in their stats, which was clearly unrelated to their all aging rapidly in the summer before they were put on the same team.

  Beyond that, you can't just look at raw output to determine how much of an impact a player has on a game. It's not just how many points they score or how many rebounds they get, it's when they get those points and rebounds. It's also all of the little things that they do to help a team win that don't show up directly in a stat sheet. Case in point, loathe though I am to admit it, LeBron. Look at his stats from this year's playoffs and you'd come to the conclusion that he had one of his least productive playoffs and did less to help his team win than in some of his earlier seasons. Watch his impact on the games and you come to a completely different conclusion.

I think players are more willing to blend their talents into the team concept a lot more as they age.  They may be better players at 25 but that doesn't mean that they are ready to do the necessary things to be on a winning team.

  But blending their talents into a team concept leads to lower individual numbers even if it leads to better team play. I think a couple of factors that generally lead to better stats for stars when they're younger are a) having to shoulder more of the load, b) not having the skills or experience to influence a game beyond their individual numbers and c) trying to establish themselves at the top of the hierarchy. I don't think it's because they're better players when they're 24 than they are at 30. I think the only top players that you could realistically claim were better players when they were that young are players whose careers were derailed by injury.

[Fan from VT]

But that concept doesn't fit with our need to create story narratives. So lebron didn't win titles not because he was an amazing player on a garbage team but because he had to mature and grow and learn (and have a good team). Same for Jordan I guess (plus pippen, grant, rodman, phil jackson, etc, but shhhh...). I guess Kobe had nothing to learn? Or maybe it was cause shaq was a beast. Duncan was just super ready? Or maybe twin towers with david robinson helped. But i'm sure he would have won titles early if he'd been drafted onto boston, right!?! how about Rondo: Guess he peaked early because that's when he won his title...or he had 3 HOFers. See, team circumstances matter tremendously, but they don't fit with the fun stories.

  It's *not* all narrative. I'm fairly confident that if you stuck the LeBron of 2012 or 2013 in that finals against the Mavs the Heat would have handled them. LeBron's grown as a player. He's made improvements to his game and his understanding of what it takes to be successful. You probably can't pick out the difference by staring at his numbers but his improvement as a player (especially compared to his "peak years") is easy to see when you watch the games.

  The same is true with Rondo. You're obviously correct that he won a title at an early age because he was on a team with great players. But compare his numbers (17/10/10) in 2009 (when he struggled at times) to his numbers (17/7/12) in 2012 when he led the team to game 7 of the ECF. The difference in his numbers was pretty small, the difference in his impact on the game was pretty big. Again, just looking at numbers only gets you so far.

It's all circular logic though. You start with the assumption that players win titles when they are at the best, then they win a title so you assume that was when they were at their best. Kobe and magic both won the majority of their titles at or before age 24 (edit: 25 for magic). So what happened? Early peak then a flameout? Good then bad then good? Same for Duncan? Jordan was bad for a while then really good? Same for Lebron? Wade was good then bad then good? What did KG have to learn? Was he better in '08 than '04? (definitely no).

No, players have a window of contention, a period at which they are incredibly effective star players. When their actual peak is doesn't matter in terms of titles; there can only be one winner every year and there is a lot of variance. What matters is the sustained period during which they can lead their team to titles. Whether they win depends on opponents, luck, and teammates. Then we build the story around when they win, especially if it confirms what we want to believe about someone.

[JBcat]

Given that the average career length of a player is 6 years and the average starting age for an NBA career is 21 years old, the number makes some sense. How can the AVERAGE players's peak start at 27 if that is when their career is ending.

But we all know that it isn't the average player that is the difference makers in the NBA, its the stars and superstars. My guess is the star or superstar's average peak season is around 28-30

I think the average career length might be closer to 4 years for an NBA player.

I would actually like to see a study done for players who have at least played until around age 32.   The reason I see that is it would exclude players who just played through their first contract, and can be labeled busts, players who might have teased us with talent to get their second contracts such as Marcus Banks but maybe really didn't belong in the NBA, players whose careers were derailed by injuries such as derailed such as Brandon Roy, or players who really didn't work on their game and/or didn't stay in shape and just fizzled out like Steve Francis and Shawn Kemp.


You could take it step further and even if they played until age 32 but had a significant injury that impacted their game such as Grant Hill or TMAC you take them out of the equation. I like that age limit too cause it probably means the player is continuously working to stay in the league and not just living off of their talent or paycheck for the most part.


I would bet if such a study was done for those players their "peak year" would be around 27,28. 

[BballTim]

But that concept doesn't fit with our need to create story narratives. So lebron didn't win titles not because he was an amazing player on a garbage team but because he had to mature and grow and learn (and have a good team). Same for Jordan I guess (plus pippen, grant, rodman, phil jackson, etc, but shhhh...). I guess Kobe had nothing to learn? Or maybe it was cause shaq was a beast. Duncan was just super ready? Or maybe twin towers with david robinson helped. But i'm sure he would have won titles early if he'd been drafted onto boston, right!?! how about Rondo: Guess he peaked early because that's when he won his title...or he had 3 HOFers. See, team circumstances matter tremendously, but they don't fit with the fun stories.

  It's *not* all narrative. I'm fairly confident that if you stuck the LeBron of 2012 or 2013 in that finals against the Mavs the Heat would have handled them. LeBron's grown as a player. He's made improvements to his game and his understanding of what it takes to be successful. You probably can't pick out the difference by staring at his numbers but his improvement as a player (especially compared to his "peak years") is easy to see when you watch the games.

  The same is true with Rondo. You're obviously correct that he won a title at an early age because he was on a team with great players. But compare his numbers (17/10/10) in 2009 (when he struggled at times) to his numbers (17/7/12) in 2012 when he led the team to game 7 of the ECF. The difference in his numbers was pretty small, the difference in his impact on the game was pretty big. Again, just looking at numbers only gets you so far.

It's all circular logic though. You start with the assumption that players win titles when they are at the best, then they win a title so you assume that was when they were at their best. Kobe and magic both won the majority of their titles at or before age 24 (edit: 25 for magic). So what happened? Early peak then a flameout? Good then bad then good? Same for Duncan? Jordan was bad for a while then really good? Same for Lebron? Wade was good then bad then good? What did KG have to learn? Was he better in '08 than '04? (definitely no).

  Kobe wasn't a good enough player to lead a team to a title when he was younger, those titles were due to Shaq. Magic was still leading teams to the finals until his career was cut short due to illness. But I'm not using circular logic because I'm not measuring how good a player is by whether their team wins a title or not. I'm just not basing my opinion solely on stats.

  I'd say that if you're looking for circular logic, look at the claims that you can determine when a player's at his peak by looking at the numbers. You're claiming that the players don't win titles during their best years because they don't have great teammates, but you're using stats inflated by having poor teammates to determine a player's best years.

[LarBrd33]

Here's some conceptual illustrations of the concept.

If this is representative of reality, you could see that a player's decline is probably barely noticeable,  but only shows up when you look at large numbers of data to figure out a "true" peak average impact in the NBA. You can also easily see that a star player's prime is quite long, with many years of play effective enough to win a title after the peak and few before. You can also see that a player's mental ability continues to climb after their physicality has peaked. THerefore, when a player does win a title after their peak (which, by odds, is clearly more likely) we attribute it to their improved mental ability because that has clearly gotten better; what we don't realize is that their improved mental ability is just balancing the onset of physical decline allowing the total player impact to remain very effective and not noticeably declined each season.

But what happens when a player wins titles early then stops, like Kobe's career peak (It was all about teammates..early with shaq, title-less peak with kwame, titles post-peak with gasol/bynum/odom) but it doesn't really fit with the tempting storybook narrative of the lebron and jordan story.

Did you create these based on any hard data?  You ought to right a blog post about this. 

[JBcat]

Given that the average career length of a player is 6 years and the average starting age for an NBA career is 21 years old, the number makes some sense. How can the AVERAGE players's peak start at 27 if that is when their career is ending.

But we all know that it isn't the average player that is the difference makers in the NBA, its the stars and superstars. My guess is the star or superstar's average peak season is around 28-30

I think the average career length might be closer to 4 years for an NBA player.

I would actually like to see a study done for players who have at least played until around age 32.   The reason I see that is it would exclude players who just played through their first contract, and can be labeled busts, players who might have teased us with talent to get their second contracts such as Marcus Banks but maybe really didn't belong in the NBA, players whose careers were derailed by injuries such as derailed such as Brandon Roy, or players who really didn't work on their game and/or didn't stay in shape and just fizzled out like Steve Francis and Shawn Kemp.


You could take it step further and even if they played until age 32 but had a significant injury that impacted their game such as Grant Hill or TMAC you take them out of the equation. I like that age limit too cause it probably means the player is continuously working to stay in the league and not just living off of their talent or paycheck for the most part.


I would bet if such a study was done for those players their "peak year" would be around 27,28.

Just did a little research using my above criteria using basketball reference.com

For Kevin Garnett you could say at age 27 was his best statistical year with career high in PPG and RPG.  Also career high for win shares.

Paul Pierce hard to say but maybe at age 28 when he averaged 26.8 PPG. 

Dirk I'll go with age 27 with a career high in PPG and win shares.

Shaq at age 27 had career high in PPG and win shares, and 2nd season high in RPG.

I looked at Ray and Duncan too but they had too many similar seasons IMO to decide which one was their best statistically.

Manu Ginobli maybe age 30 with easily career high in PPG and career high in RPG.

David West at age 27, 28 had very similar career high numbers.

Kobe at age 27 with a career high in PPG at 35.4, and career high in win shares.

Wade is 31 now, and I would go with at age 27 with a career high in PPG APG, and win shares.

This is just a small sample, but all but Manu right around the 27, 28 age range. 

[clover]

Given that the average career length of a player is 6 years and the average starting age for an NBA career is 21 years old, the number makes some sense. How can the AVERAGE players's peak start at 27 if that is when their career is ending.

But we all know that it isn't the average player that is the difference makers in the NBA, its the stars and superstars. My guess is the star or superstar's average peak season is around 28-30

I think the average career length might be closer to 4 years for an NBA player.

I would actually like to see a study done for players who have at least played until around age 32.   The reason I see that is it would exclude players who just played through their first contract, and can be labeled busts, players who might have teased us with talent to get their second contracts such as Marcus Banks but maybe really didn't belong in the NBA, players whose careers were derailed by injuries such as derailed such as Brandon Roy, or players who really didn't work on their game and/or didn't stay in shape and just fizzled out like Steve Francis and Shawn Kemp.


You could take it step further and even if they played until age 32 but had a significant injury that impacted their game such as Grant Hill or TMAC you take them out of the equation. I like that age limit too cause it probably means the player is continuously working to stay in the league and not just living off of their talent or paycheck for the most part.


I would bet if such a study was done for those players their "peak year" would be around 27,28.

Just did a little research using my above criteria using basketball reference.com

For Kevin Garnett you could say at age 27 was his best statistical year with career high in PPG and RPG.  Also career high for win shares.

Paul Pierce hard to say but maybe at age 28 when he averaged 26.8 PPG. 

Dirk I'll go with age 27 with a career high in PPG and win shares.

Shaq at age 27 had career high in PPG and win shares, and 2nd season high in RPG.

I looked at Ray and Duncan too but they had too many similar seasons IMO to decide which one was their best statistically.

Manu Ginobli maybe age 30 with easily career high in PPG and career high in RPG.

David West at age 27, 28 had very similar career high numbers.

Kobe at age 27 with a career high in PPG at 35.4, and career high in win shares.

Wade is 31 now, and I would go with at age 27 with a career high in PPG APG, and win shares.

This is just a small sample, but all but Manu right around the 27, 28 age range.

Twenty-seven or 28 sounds about right for a peak--which means we're probably about to see a career year from Jeff Green.

Average career length is a statistical combination of players who pan out and play until age and injuries wash them out of the league with cup-of-coffee failures who get a few minutes for a year or two and never catch on, as well as guys who show a little more promise and get three or four years before the league gives up on them. Then you've got those guys who make usually brief appearances after years in Europe or the d-league.

But real, legit players probably average 10 years in the league.

[BballTim]

Here's some conceptual illustrations of the concept.

If this is representative of reality, you could see that a player's decline is probably barely noticeable,  but only shows up when you look at large numbers of data to figure out a "true" peak average impact in the NBA. You can also easily see that a star player's prime is quite long, with many years of play effective enough to win a title after the peak and few before. You can also see that a player's mental ability continues to climb after their physicality has peaked. THerefore, when a player does win a title after their peak (which, by odds, is clearly more likely) we attribute it to their improved mental ability because that has clearly gotten better; what we don't realize is that their improved mental ability is just balancing the onset of physical decline allowing the total player impact to remain very effective and not noticeably declined each season.

But what happens when a player wins titles early then stops, like Kobe's career peak (It was all about teammates..early with shaq, title-less peak with kwame, titles post-peak with gasol/bynum/odom) but it doesn't really fit with the tempting storybook narrative of the lebron and jordan story.

Did you create these based on any hard data?  You ought to right a blog post about this.

  What would really be interesting would be to somehow factor in the quality of a player's teammates. It's hard to say he's showing "players are better when they're younger, their declining statistics show this" and not "most good players start out on bad teams (that get high draft picks) and have to shoulder more of the load before better teams are built around them". I'm still fairly confident that people are looking at the latter and claiming the former.

[Fan from VT]

Here's some conceptual illustrations of the concept.

If this is representative of reality, you could see that a player's decline is probably barely noticeable,  but only shows up when you look at large numbers of data to figure out a "true" peak average impact in the NBA. You can also easily see that a star player's prime is quite long, with many years of play effective enough to win a title after the peak and few before. You can also see that a player's mental ability continues to climb after their physicality has peaked. THerefore, when a player does win a title after their peak (which, by odds, is clearly more likely) we attribute it to their improved mental ability because that has clearly gotten better; what we don't realize is that their improved mental ability is just balancing the onset of physical decline allowing the total player impact to remain very effective and not noticeably declined each season.

But what happens when a player wins titles early then stops, like Kobe's career peak (It was all about teammates..early with shaq, title-less peak with kwame, titles post-peak with gasol/bynum/odom) but it doesn't really fit with the tempting storybook narrative of the lebron and jordan story.

Did you create these based on any hard data?  You ought to right a blog post about this.

No no no. It's a conceptual illustration.

The original premise (which I'm not sure I agree with, btw), was that a player's peak is around 24-25. I picked 25.

People then argued that most star players (but not nearly all, with kobe, wade, magic, bird, duncan winning titles before 25) win championships after that peak [leading to the conclusion that the peak then must be later].

People also argued that players continue to develop mentally all through their careers; they continue adding stuff to their toolbox, tricks, knowledge, etc. [This led to the conclusion that, say, Lebron needed to "learn" some important life lessons to win a title, and that he peaked as a total player with his first title].


I created the graphs above to show that all the above points could be true, even without the [bracketed] conclusions of each point being true. That is to say a player's total peak could be at 25 years old, even though they continue to develop mentally (slowing their overall decline, but not making their total impact continue to rise), and they win most of their titles after 25 (because of the slow decline leading to a long window of "title opportunities," with just simply more title chances after peak than before, and all could easily be true at the same time if you don't start with the assumption that players win titles at their peak.

It's much much more likely that players have a title window (conceptually on the graph as one of the horizontal lines), above which it's basically impossible to tell the difference from season to season with the naked eye (and is likely not accurately represented as stats either on an individual basis), but could result in a title in any given season. But whether a title is actually won depends on TEAMMATES, opponents, and luck. So see from the conceptual graph: they could peak at 25, continue to develop mentally (but not get overall better, just decline less quickly, in fact, not even noticeably), and have much more title opportunities after 25 despite not being quite as good a total player. All true at once.

[BballTim]

Here's some conceptual illustrations of the concept.

If this is representative of reality, you could see that a player's decline is probably barely noticeable,  but only shows up when you look at large numbers of data to figure out a "true" peak average impact in the NBA. You can also easily see that a star player's prime is quite long, with many years of play effective enough to win a title after the peak and few before. You can also see that a player's mental ability continues to climb after their physicality has peaked. THerefore, when a player does win a title after their peak (which, by odds, is clearly more likely) we attribute it to their improved mental ability because that has clearly gotten better; what we don't realize is that their improved mental ability is just balancing the onset of physical decline allowing the total player impact to remain very effective and not noticeably declined each season.

But what happens when a player wins titles early then stops, like Kobe's career peak (It was all about teammates..early with shaq, title-less peak with kwame, titles post-peak with gasol/bynum/odom) but it doesn't really fit with the tempting storybook narrative of the lebron and jordan story.

Did you create these based on any hard data?  You ought to right a blog post about this.

No no no. It's a conceptual illustration.

The original premise (which I'm not sure I agree with, btw), was that a player's peak is around 24-25. I picked 25.

People then argued that most star players (but not nearly all, with kobe, wade, magic, bird, duncan winning titles before 25) win championships after that peak [leading to the conclusion that the peak then must be later].

People also argued that players continue to develop mentally all through their careers; they continue adding stuff to their toolbox, tricks, knowledge, etc. [This led to the conclusion that, say, Lebron needed to "learn" some important life lessons to win a title, and that he peaked as a total player with his first title].


I created the graphs above to show that all the above points could be true, even without the [bracketed] conclusions of each point being true. That is to say a player's total peak could be at 25 years old, even though they continue to develop mentally (slowing their overall decline, but not making their total impact continue to rise), and they win most of their titles after 25 (because of the slow decline leading to a long window of "title opportunities," with just simply more title chances after peak than before, and all could easily be true at the same time if you don't start with the assumption that players win titles at their peak.

It's much much more likely that players have a title window (conceptually on the graph as one of the horizontal lines), above which it's basically impossible to tell the difference from season to season with the naked eye (and is likely not accurately represented as stats either on an individual basis), but could result in a title in any given season. But whether a title is actually won depends on TEAMMATES, opponents, and luck. So see from the conceptual graph: they could peak at 25, continue to develop mentally (but not get overall better, just decline less quickly, in fact, not even noticeably), and have much more title opportunities after 25 despite not being quite as good a total player. All true at once.

  It's true that whether a title is won depends quite a bit on teammates, but so do stats. I'd guess that, over most of your "championship window", if you could quantify how strong the supporting casts were for these players the star's stats would track more with the weakness of the teammates than the age of the stars. You mention players like Bird and Magic and Kobe being on better teams when they were younger, but you'll also notice that none of them have the characteristic bulge in their production when they were younger.

[D.o.s.]

Here's some conceptual illustrations of the concept.

If this is representative of reality, you could see that a player's decline is probably barely noticeable,  but only shows up when you look at large numbers of data to figure out a "true" peak average impact in the NBA. You can also easily see that a star player's prime is quite long, with many years of play effective enough to win a title after the peak and few before. You can also see that a player's mental ability continues to climb after their physicality has peaked. THerefore, when a player does win a title after their peak (which, by odds, is clearly more likely) we attribute it to their improved mental ability because that has clearly gotten better; what we don't realize is that their improved mental ability is just balancing the onset of physical decline allowing the total player impact to remain very effective and not noticeably declined each season.

But what happens when a player wins titles early then stops, like Kobe's career peak (It was all about teammates..early with shaq, title-less peak with kwame, titles post-peak with gasol/bynum/odom) but it doesn't really fit with the tempting storybook narrative of the lebron and jordan story.

Did you create these based on any hard data?  You ought to right a blog post about this.

No no no. It's a conceptual illustration.

The original premise (which I'm not sure I agree with, btw), was that a player's peak is around 24-25. I picked 25.

People then argued that most star players (but not nearly all, with kobe, wade, magic, bird, duncan winning titles before 25) win championships after that peak [leading to the conclusion that the peak then must be later].

People also argued that players continue to develop mentally all through their careers; they continue adding stuff to their toolbox, tricks, knowledge, etc. [This led to the conclusion that, say, Lebron needed to "learn" some important life lessons to win a title, and that he peaked as a total player with his first title].


I created the graphs above to show that all the above points could be true, even without the [bracketed] conclusions of each point being true. That is to say a player's total peak could be at 25 years old, even though they continue to develop mentally (slowing their overall decline, but not making their total impact continue to rise), and they win most of their titles after 25 (because of the slow decline leading to a long window of "title opportunities," with just simply more title chances after peak than before, and all could easily be true at the same time if you don't start with the assumption that players win titles at their peak.

It's much much more likely that players have a title window (conceptually on the graph as one of the horizontal lines), above which it's basically impossible to tell the difference from season to season with the naked eye (and is likely not accurately represented as stats either on an individual basis), but could result in a title in any given season. But whether a title is actually won depends on TEAMMATES, opponents, and luck. So see from the conceptual graph: they could peak at 25, continue to develop mentally (but not get overall better, just decline less quickly, in fact, not even noticeably), and have much more title opportunities after 25 despite not being quite as good a total player. All true at once.

  It's true that whether a title is won depends quite a bit on teammates, but so do stats. I'd guess that, over most of your "championship window", if you could quantify how strong the supporting casts were for these players the star's stats would track more with the weakness of the teammates than the age of the stars. You mention players like Bird and Magic and Kobe being on better teams when they were younger, but you'll also notice that none of them have the characteristic bulge in their production when they were younger.

Bird and Magic predate the 'be like Mike' era of single player dominance, though. Those two guys were incredible basketball players on incredible teams.

Kobe's first full season as a starter (the 99 lockout year, yucky.), he put up 20/5/3 on 47% shooting.

While his per/36 numbers bear that out, it's still impressive coming from someone who was one- and two-years away from 15/3/2 and 7.5/2/1, respectively.

Then he gets Shaq.

Then Shaq leaves, and we see him do the "stat gouging only good player on a bad team" bit in 2005-2006. So no, he wasn't younger, but those post-Shaq pre-Pau teams were baaaaaad.