Are We the Youngest Team in the League?

Didnt want to put opions in the post, but here some other random thoughts I have.

Memphis, OKC, and Portland have MUCH better young talent than us. They also play their young talent alot more than we do. Hoping that said young talent can develop and build there team around them.

With Nellie its not so much of an age factor, its an expirience factor. Biedrins, Azibuike, Turiaf and Ellis are young in age but the have a decent amount of expirienc(maybe not Buike yet). Not sure if we can expect too much growth of those players. The players we play of have more less topped out. The players that need to play more to develop stay firmly cemented on Nelson’s bench until an injury forces Nelson to use his bench(see Marco, Morrow, and Randolph.

I was thinking the same thing and considered making that claim in response to someone who claimed we dont need to add any more pieces, but just wait for our young guys to develop because “we’re the youngest team in the league!” But I was too lazy to do the legwork. Rec’d!

Your conclusion statement makes the rest of the post sound long-winded BUT it’s an interesting study none-the-less.

We need more diaries like this.

Based on your numbers (and subject to rounding errors) the average Warrior player, weighted by PT, is 25.6 years old. Still damn young. I’ll leave it to you work out that figure for the other 29 teams… ;-)

I think a lot of Warriors fans already knew that Nellie wasn’t our youngsters, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. The whole season there’s been a ton of people saying things like, “Why the hell doesn’t that fat bastard play Wright?!?! (Or Randolph, Morrow, Belinelli etc)”.

Also, you’re saying that we’re not the youngest team in the NBA because we don’t play the youngsters? In my opinion, we are the youngest team in the NBA.

Part of being a young team means that you have players that are not ready to play. That’s why Nellie has been going with the vets a lot. A lot of teams lose games because they don’t have depth; one reason a team may not have a lot of depth is because they have a lot of young players that aren’t ready to play. When a team has a bad record in the season due to not having a lot a good bench, it could mean that it’s because they are a young team.

When you see games where Nellie only plays his veteran players, it only proves how much of a young team we are since he cant trust a lot of the youth on the team; that still sounds like being the youngest team in the league to me, when a team can’t play a lot of their players because they are too inexperienced.

CONCLUSION: We are the youngest team in the league. (At least in my opinion, lol).

I used the word ‘young’ way too many times in here, can’t think of another word for it haha.

I know what you mean, though. There was a point in the season when the Warriors were the tallest team in the NBA, but obviously it never showed on the court since Nellie always played small ball. Also, the Pistons used the be the 2nd lightest (least heaviest) team in the NBA when they had Billups, although no one really would expect that since they would always pound the ball in the paint and whatnot.

like buike turiaf is pretty young and andris is still only 22. and in games we have lost many were because a lack of experience or young mistakes

roster in the league to prove your point. Otherwise you havn’t really proved anything. Don’t worry we will wait right here for you to get back….. Uh when do you think you’ll be done?

We still are the youngest team in the league by definition. But, like you said, that’s often not true on the court.

Your point should read: We are the youngest team by the definition, but that doesn’t excuse us from sucking.

The teams you mention play their young guys exclusively because, really, that’s all they have. The way the Warriors are constructed, a lot of your best players at the moment, are your veterans. So naturally, they get the chunk of the playing time.

the Warriors have more young players than any team in the NBA.

HE needs to play alot more due to his skill level. And Rob Kurz shouldnt even start at ALL in my opinion. Randolph has proven that he can run with the big guys and Don Nelson just needs to capitalize on that. Once again all in my opinion, feel free to agree or disagree.

The real question is where are we NOW. Measuring minutes only, doesn’t take into consideration the fact that Belli IS ready to play and Nellie plays him when he’s healthy. Similarly, Wright’s minutes were starting to ramp up a little a ways into the season after playing hardly any early on, which your measure doesn’t take into consideration. I think Nellie would’ve been playing him more and more, judging by his great stats in that Lakers game (during which he was injured). Perhaps most importantly, Randolph IS getting minutes and is showing some SCARY talent. Turiaf is only 25, too, getting good minutes, so he’s pretty young also. We’re younger than your post suggests. Furthermore, playing time is not the only thing to consider. We might also consider the value of youth in trades. From the youth of Wright, Randolph, Belli, CJ, Morrow, Biedrins, Turiaf and Ellis, we have a lot of trading power added that isn’t reflected in the game due to redundant talents who compete for the same position. Basically, we have a lot of potential, if the organization will be smarter about whom they keep and for whom they trade.

What are the similar averages for the other teams in the league? Rookies tend not to get much PT, as do raw young potential guys… lots of teams have young players sitting at the end of their bench. I’m sure there are some teams out there like Memphis and OKC who are starting their young guys because they’ve completely blown everything up, but the vast majority of teams have older guys playing the bulk of their minutes. Also, the fact that we have so many 22-23 year olds says that we don’t have any veterans to come in and play when one of our starters goes down. We have no veteran depth, which hurts us in other ways. I’d say take the average of the playing time average age and the overall average age and you’ll have a good estimate for the effect youth has on the team.

you really did your homework on this one..you definitely deserve a rec!

I think is the most important stat, not years out of the womb. Someone like LeBron would seem to bring the number down for his team, but he has been in the NBA for what, 4 years now?

Here are the average years of NBA experience for the teams in the Pacific Division (I dont have that much time on my hands)
Warriors = 2.87 years
Kings = 4 years
Clippers = 4.8
Lakers = 4.86
Suns = 5.67

I think it is telling that the teams with the least amount of NBA experience overall have the worst records. Also, the Lakers only have 1 Rookie on their team. They are not using roster spots to develop rookies. If they want to develop a player they are building on someone with atleast a year or two in the game which gives them an advantage over a team like ours.

I think the bright spot in this statistic is that the Warriors despite having the youngest team have the most potential to improve and do not have close to the worst record.

I am willing to bet this is true even if you calculate the averages for the entire NBA

I say go Dubs. Maybe we are on the right track afterall

above numbers are for current roster

That stuff is pretty interesting. Although I disagree with the first comment saying that our youngsters are leveling off and will not see as much progress. Yes, monta, andris, and others are gaining loads of experience, but they still have much more room to improve in their game. And I think that all of our players have extreme potential to improve on their current skills as well.

Gonna hopefully roll to clippers game tonight.

By the way I’m giving away free music at my site if anyone wants it. Just click on my name.