SB Nation: How the best and worst NBA teams stack up in terms of age

[DieMrBond]

Here's a reasonably interesting article by SB Nation, that shows how age relates to quality. Pretty basic, but some nice props to the Spurs.

http://www.sbnation.com/2013/3/21/41...ockets-thunder

An unavoidable truth of the NBA is that older teams win more games. The correlation between age of a team's players and on-court success has been around forever, and it's unlikely to ever change. There are a few reasons it exists:

1. Players typically peak from age 26-29. The current average age in the NBA weighted by minutes played is 26.7. So the generally accepted peak period skews toward the older range. Most of the league's best players are older than league average. Last season, eight of the 15 All-NBA members were older than league average -- despite it being a golden era of young stars.

2. Lesser teams skew younger because they often focus on talent development instead of grabbing every possible win. You'd rather play your raw lottery pick than your 29-year-old free agent to be if you're 20 games out of the No. 8, right? Young players are almost always cheaper than veterans, as well.

3. A cousin of that point: Team payroll also correlates with quality as franchises closer to contention are more willing to spend money to improve at the margins. Teams like the Bobcats don't chase Kenyon Martin in January.

4. Good teams are kept in one piece. Bad teams aren't. Those good teams typically center on cores of 2-4 players; getting older is a human reality for every man, including these athletic superheroes. So the Heat are getting older so long as the core stays together and the peripheral pieces don't change dramatically. (We'll see a wonderful exception to this soon.) Meanwhile, there tends to be more frequent churn for bad teams. Because the draft is a huge piece of team-building, that churn tends to keep teams young until they find a winning combination.

This image in particular was interesting:


Talk about consistency!

[Richie]

I'd love to see that graph plotted over time for each team to show the upward movement as they age

[Captivus]

I like this graph,particularly how well this Quality (average point margin) variable fits my NBA team perception.
Houston being higher than BOS, ATL. GSW looks a little low, IMO.
Still, this is a good stat, almost perfect representation of how good each team is...IMO.
Having Denver, Indiana, Houston and Golden State in the same area feel right, young a good.
Same with Por, Cle and NOH.