When LeBron James made his NBA debut in 2003, Anthony Edwards was merely a toddler, taking his first steps on Earth. When Kobe Bryant threw the iconic ‘oop to Shaquille O’Neal in the 2000 Western Conference finals, Tyrese Haliburton was just a few months old. Jalen Brunson is young enough to ask his father, Rick, what it was like to play against Cleveland LeBron. Oh, and when Michael Jordan hit the clinching shot over Utah in the 1998 NBA Finals? Shai Gilgeous-Alexander wasn’t even born yet.
Feeling old yet?
Advertisement
Millennials certainly do.
But nothing made this millennial feel older than the following fact:
Now that the Boston Celtics have left the party, it is guaranteed that the 2025 NBA Finals winner will be the first Gen Z champion in league history.
Welcome to the Zoomers NBA.
Headlining these conference finals are four youthful teams whose franchises haven’t won a title in decades, if ever — and whose average age makes them too young to qualify for the millennial cohort. The rotations of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Indiana Pacers, New York Knicks and Minnesota Timberwolves hardly have any 30-year-olds.
Advertisement
The playoffs used to be the domain of older, savvy vets deep into their thirties, but the league has gotten younger, and the best teams seem to be aging in that direction more rapidly.
Is contending for a title increasingly becoming a young man’s game?
(Amy Monks/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
The first Gen Z champ
While there is no official separating line between Gen Z and millennials, leading think tank has defined 1996 as the last birth year for the millennial generation based on their demographic work looking at technological, economic and social shifts throughout the last century. For the first time in NBA history, all four conference finalists — based on minutes-weighted average age, which accounts for playing time — will fit into the Gen Z category.
Advertisement
This postseason, the Celtics’ minutes-weighted average age was 29.9 years old, a birth year of 1995, making them the last millennial team that was remaining in the playoff field. The much younger and healthier Knicks squad (27.7) ousted them in six games after Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in Game 4. (For the research study, ages are derived from Basketball Reference’s historical pages using a player’s age on Feb. 1 of the season.) If current trends hold, the Celtics will be the last millennial team to ever win the championship.
The kids are doing more than alright. Led by 26-year-old Gilgeous-Alexander, the Thunder’s minutes-weighted average age clocks in at 24.6 years old. That gives the West’s No. 1 seed a “team” birth year of 2000, three years after the 1997 cutoff for Gen Z. The 25-year-old Haliburton represents the face of the speedy Pacers, who, at an average of 26.1 years old, blitzed past the slightly more senior Cleveland Cavaliers (26.5) and Milwaukee Bucks (28.1) in earlier rounds. The Timberwolves, spearheaded by 23-year-old phenom Edwards, have an average age of 27.7 — the same as the Knicks, whose oldest rotation player is Josh Hart, who just turned 30.
If you’ve been paying attention, the NBA’s elder statesmen have all been kicked to the curb this postseason. There is no LeBron James, no Stephen Curry, no Jimmy Butler left. No Kevin Durant, who didn’t even make the play-in tournament. Not even Jrue Holiday, who won a title with both the Celtics and Bucks; the 34-year-old might as well be known as Uncle Jrue around some of the remaining youngsters.
Advertisement
Up 2-0 in the Western Conference finals, the Thunder are redefining everything that older generations thought they knew about what championship contenders look like. If OKC were to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy this season, it would be the second-youngest NBA champion ever, trailing only the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers (24.2) led by a 24-year-old Bill Walton. A modern precedent to these Thunder doesn’t really exist if they pull it off. The youngest championship team of the 21st century was the 2015 Golden State Warriors, who were 26.3 years old, almost two full years older than the current OKC squad.
With the Thunder leading the way, the average age of the four conference finalists stands at 26.5 years old, which is the lowest on record. In 1999, that same figure was 30 years old.
This continues a surprising trend that has seen the NBA get younger and younger in its final stages of the season. A Gen Z champion was only a matter of time, but if late 1990s roster trends held firm, we’d be about 2-3 years away from reaching that point. With these four teams, we’re way ahead of schedule.
Advertisement
While it’s true that the league, in general, has gotten younger across the decades, the final four used to be far older than the also-rans. Nowadays, the age gap is narrowing to the point where, especially this season, there doesn’t seem to be much of one at all.
What’s going on?
Zooming out, this could be a function of injuries weeding out the old man. Last week, I pointed out that the postseason is being riddled with injuries to star players more than ever. Heading into this postseason, the NBA averaged seven injured All-Stars over the previous five postseasons, a rate that has increased more than sevenfold since the late 1990s (0.8 per season).
Older stars like Stephen Curry (hamstring strain) and Damian Lillard (Achilles tear) were knocked out due to leg injuries while other veteran-led teams like the LA Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers only lasted a…
Tom Haberstroh
