Clippers countering NBA champions' youth with age

After signing 40-year-old Chris Paul and 37-year-old Brook Lopez this summer, the Clippers are going to be the the oldest team in the NBA, with an average age of 30.7 years. But Yahoo's Tom Haberstroh argued that, adjusting for minutes played based on last season's numbers, the Clippers might have the oldest roster in NBA history.

While the Clippers do have a few young players, like this year's No. 30 pick Yanic Konan Niederhauser and 19-year-old Cam Christie, the majority of their roster is over 30, as are eight of their top 11 players. Forward John Collins, center Ivica Zubac and forward Derrick Jones, Jr. will all be 28 when the 2025-26 season starts. Their next-youngest rotation player is 31-year-old Kris Dunn.

Dunn is just 18 days younger than the oldest player on the Thunder, guard Alex Caruso. Third-string center Kenrich Williams is 30, and no one else on the Thunder has even celebrated their 28th birthday.

The Clippers re-signed James Harden, who turns 36 before the season, plus Nic Batum, who turns 37 in December. Adding 32-year-old Bradley Beal counts as a youth movement by Clippers standards.

But there's a method to the Clippers age movement. First, if you're going to have an older roster, that roster needs to have a lot of depth. The Clippers are at least 11 players deep, which helps when these guys need rests or get injured.

They also have exploited a market inefficiency by scooping up rehabilitation projects like Beal, who signed for cheap thanks to a lucrative buyout from the Phoenix Suns. Paul and Batum are on minimum deals and Lopez signed at a discount, having already collected massive salaries earlier in their careers.

The other factor is simply experience. There's not an NBA situation that someone on this roster hasn't faced. The team might not be fast, but they're strong, they're tall and they're not going to get surprised.

No one can match the Thunder's combination of youth and talent. But the Clippers have built a team of "uncs" who have an unmatchable combination of age and talent themselves.