
The NBA has never felt younger and more reliant on up-and-coming stars than it does today. Teams are beginning to utilize the draft more and more. We’ve seen plenty of tank-a-thons by teams in the last five years, and these efforts have panned out to varying degrees. For some, it has materialized into dynamic cores full of promising young stars.
So, which teams have the best young cores in the NBA?
To compile a list such as this there must be rules. It seems the agreed-upon metric across NBA channels to define a “young player” as 25-years-old or younger. Chaos reigns if you don’t have rules, so that’s the metric I’ll go by. This is the formula that’s been applied to rate the five teams with the best young collection of talent. Inclusion onto this list is also based on how many players of that age range actually impact winning. Each team has five players highlighted for inclusion, in ascending order of importance. So just because you have a young stud who has a “potential” ceiling (see Poku, Kevin Knox, Joshua Primo) but has never even sniffed it, they won’t be included.
The five teams included have young cores which will presumably stick together for a few years, and just might one day turn into the backbone of an 8th seed playoff run in a season or two. Or in the Hawks’ case, another potential conference finals run this year.
So copy and paste this article and drop it like a match in your Discord, group chat, or if you’re a Boomer, your Facebook post and enjoy the back and forth which inevitably comes when someone, or someone’s team, is left off the list.