We've come to accept certain fundamental truths about NBA champions. For example, title hopefuls must be two-way teams led by All-NBA caliber superstars.
Every spring, we evaluate the NBA playoff field by reviewing the championship prerequisites and finding which clubs meet the standard in our annual Anatomy of a Champion feature. But this year's analysis generated some interesting results.
The conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers were the only teams to measure up, which shouldn't surprise anyone. However, either club winning the 2025 title would be breaking the mold. If history is any indication, the Thunder and Cavs are too young and too inexperienced to survive the NBA's two-month, four-round playoff gauntlet. A level of maturity and steeliness is required to win it all, and that's something a team can only acquire through years of paying its postseason dues.
The Thunder are already an extreme outlier. The six previous teams to win 68 games in a season had average ages ranging from 27 to 30.7, with a collective average of 28.8. Likewise, the squads that own the second- through sixth-best point differentials in NBA history - all of whom won championships - had average ages between 26.1 and 29.5, with a collective average of 28.4. The 2024-25 Thunder, who went 68-14 with the best point differential ever, have an average age of 24.8.
With all that in mind and prompted by a reader's question on X, I wanted to see just how unprecedented it would be for a team that young to win the title. In fact, the 2025 Thunder could become the youngest champions since the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, who had an average age of 24.5.
However, Oklahoma City's regular rotation skews even younger. On a quest to tell the whole story, I dug into the eight-man playoff rotations of the last 20 champions (the span used for our Anatomy of a Champion feature). We'll use eight players because it seems to be the most consistent cutoff between true rotation players and those on the fringes. For example, Norman Powell was the eighth man for the 2019 Raptors. Jodie Meeks was the ninth.
After identifying the eight players in each champion's playoff rotation, I calculated the average age of the groups (using Basketball Reference's ages) and the total number of postseason games played by that rotation entering the playoffs in question.
Without further ado, let's dig into the numbers.
And here's that same data for the 2025 playoff field, listed in order of their championship odds (via theScore Bet and ESPNBet):
Some takeaways:
- The Thunder are younger than any champion in NBA history and would be the least experienced title team since the 1981 Celtics, whose eight-man playoff rotation (which included a sophomore Larry Bird) entered the spring with only 90 combined postseason games under its belt. Oklahoma City checks every box of a historically dominant champion. However, winning a title without taking their playoff lumps or experiencing years of postseason heartbreak would cement the Thunder as a generational outlier. This is only the second postseason appearance for half of OKC's rotation.
- The first-round matchup between Oklahoma City and Memphis features the two youngest and least experienced playoff teams in the field. It's a surprising reminder of how young the Grizzlies' core was when Memphis broke through a few years ago and how much credit the since-fired Taylor Jenkins deserved for guiding that early success.
- With a whopping 700 playoff contests on the rotation's resume, the defending champion Celtics boast more postseason experience than all but one (2014 Spurs) of the last 20 champions. It's hard to believe Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are now the faces of the league's most grizzled playoff team. That's what happens when you reach six conference finals in eight seasons and supplement your young stars with postseason vets like Al Horford and Jrue Holiday over the years.
- The East-leading Cavs aren't quite as young as Oklahoma City, but Cleveland is still younger than every champion since the 1980 Lakers, who won the title in Magic Johnson's rookie season. The Cavs are also less experienced than your typical 64-win juggernaut; even the sixth-seeded Pistons' rotation features more playoff experience. That's a testament to the veterans (Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr., Dennis Schroder) Detroit brought in to aid franchise star Cade Cunningham this year. It's also a reminder of how green this Cavs team still is outside of Donovan Mitchell and Max Strus.
- On the opposite end of the spectrum, history tells us that the surging Clippers are too old to get the job done. With an average (playoff rotation) age of 31.4, the 2025 Clippers are older than any champion since the 1998 Bulls (31.6), Chicago's last title team of the Michael Jordan era. The hope in L.A. is that Kawhi Leonard returned to the lineup at just the right time - early enough to ramp up for the playoffs but late enough in the season to avoid fatigue. If Leonard's Game 2 performance in Denver was any indication, that might be the case. Still, as great as Leonard looks and as complete a squad as the Clippers have been since his return, expecting Leonard and a 35-year-old James Harden to go the distance this spring seems like it's asking too much.
- The Knicks come up just short in the playoff experience department compared to the last 20 champions. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say four fewer playoff games than the 2015 Warriors spread across an entire rotation hardly disqualifies New York as a serious contender.
- In the shadow of Oklahoma City's unprecedented combination of youth and performance, the young Rockets put together quite a season in their own right. Houston finished second in the unforgiving Western Conference and fourth overall despite relying on a rotation mostly comprised of players aged 23 and younger. The veteran trio of Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks, and Steven Adams brings all 140 contests of this rotation's playoff experience, with none of Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., or Tari Eason having logged a single postseason minute before Game 1 against the battle-tested Warriors.
