New Orleans Pelicans: 3 Ways the NBA Changed after The Last Dance

Teams have gotten younger since The Last Dance

A survey of 2018-19 NBA rosters revealed that the average player age is 26-years-old.

This number has dropped nearly two years since 1998, the last year of the Jordan era in Chicago. In fact, The Last Dance era was the oldest in NBA history, with an average player age of nearly 28 years old.

There are a lot of reasons for this. The veteran role player really started to emerge in the 1990’s, which lengthened the careers of a lot of guys.

The NBA was much more physical (more on that later) so teams preferred veterans with “old man strength” over young guys. Rookies had to earn it back then and few came into the league and started right away as they do now.

The changes in contracts also make it much smarter to sign players on rookie contracts than to bring in veterans who make more money. The entire salary structure of the NBA has changed, contracts have gotten shorter, so there is more roster churn.

The new youth movement of the NBA is both good and bad.

Why the youth movement is good

Teams like the New Orleans Pelicans are young and exciting. They bring hope to fanbases who don’t often land the big name free agents.

Hope is like the carrot dangled in front of the donkey for fans, who often prefer the potential and hypotheticals of youth over the known commodity of a veteran.

Hype and chat around the NBA draft, offseason trades and free agents is almost as popular as the game itself and one of the biggest reasons is because of young players and the hope they bring to fans.

Young players are fun, interact with fans on social media and keep the game fresh. This old man on the porch enjoys watching young players emerge.

Why the youth movement is terrible

The players who come into the league now lack the skills that they had in The Last Dance era, when players usually stayed in college longer and entered the league with more polished games.

Watching The Last Dance, one thing that stuck out was that most good teams only had one or maybe two young guys who played. The rest of the spots were filled by veterans who knew what they were doing.

Now teams chuck their rookies straight into the game, many with little coaching, and ask them to learn on the fly. This didn’t really happen in the 90’s, when there was always a bigger, stronger veteran who could outplay a young guy and take his spot.

Teams promote youth because it is cheap and getting production on a rookie deal is now one of the best ways to build a team.

This has led to teams that are exciting, but less skilled, teams with players who can’t hit a jumper, but have ten million followers on Twitter.

Young players often have the hype, but lack the game to back it up. The New Orleans Pelicans are a good example.

They are very talented and very young. They look like the best team in the league one minute, then like they all drank cough syrup and forgot what sport they are playing the next.

They will back up a highlight reel alley-oop with a pass thrown into the stands. Young teams make too many mistakes, which is why the best teams in the NBA still have a balance.

The youth movement is fun, often exciting, but also leads to a worse product on the floor.