NBA ranking: The youngest teams in NBA history

The old NBA adage says youth doesn’t win games. Though we’ve seen enough to know that’s largely true, we wanted to crunch numbers to know to what extent that’s accurate.

For this exercise, we went through all NBA rosters throughout history, calculating the weighted average age of each team. We considered players’ ages as of February 1 (approximately mid-season) and factored in their playing time. (For example, a 22-year-old player averaging 35 minutes per game would have a greater impact on the final result than one playing only 10 minutes.)

The main takeaway is that, yes, the youngest teams in NBA history have pretty much zero playoff success, with the Oklahoma City Thunder being the sole exception. Of the 25 youngest teams in NBA history, only three made the playoffs: the 2009-10 Thunder, the 2010-11 Thunder and the 2023-24 Thunder. That speaks to OKC’s outstanding record of building through the draft and bodes pretty well for the team’s future.

Also worth noting: 1956-57 Rochester Royals are the only team from the 20th century on the list. Not that surprising considering players enter the NBA at a younger age in the modern era.

Anyways, here’s the ranking with the youngest teams in league history.