Clippers may be deep, but could age be their downfall?

Yahoo Sports contributing NBA writer Tom Haberstron and NBA writer Dan Devine break down L.A.’s series of offseason signings – what has pushed the team’s average age to a historic level. Hear the full conversation on “The Big Number” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

This week’s big number is 33.2.

That’s the average age: 33 years old of the Los Angeles Clippers roster if the players log as many minutes as they did last season.

OK, so.

That’s really old, OK.

The oldest team in NBA history, if this happens as it did last year.

Wow.

I looked this up.

The oldest team on record, according to basketball reference age tracking is the 200, 2001 Utah Jazz with John Stockton, Brian Russell, Karl Malone.

That team had an average age of 32.

This Clippers team is at 33.2, Dan.

So, like, way beyond what we’ve seen from any of the oldest teams, all the gray beards, all the old heads of your.

This Clippers team is older than any of those.

They got a pretty full roster now that they’ve added, uh, Brook Lopez and John Collins and Bradley Beal, and then Chris Paul is sort of like the finishing, although I, I think they still do have one roster spot available, so I don’t know.

The, the interesting thing to me is in a league, and we’ve talked about this, we’ll probably talk about it some more moving forward.

Like, it feels like we’re moving younger, right?

Like we just had the conversation about the Oklahoma City Thunder, we had the conversations about the Indiana Pacers, about the age of those rosters, the depth of those rosters, the style of play, all those sorts of things.

And Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball operations with the Clippers, was like, listen, we’re just trying to get the best players.

We need to get the best players possible and who are available to us.

And at this point, you know, based on who we could get, you know, we didn’t think that Brook Lopez was going to be available.

We didn’t think we’re gonna be able to get John Collins.

We didn’t had no idea Bradley Beal was gonna, uh, you know, reach the open market on a buyout.

We had no idea Chris Paul was gonna be available in the 3rd week of free agency, the end of July.

And so we’re going to get the best players we can that fit with our style.

They’ve put themselves in that position where it’s really interesting.

This might be the deepest roster in the league right now.

But also, as you say, pretty comfortably the oldest, and those two things don’t necessarily seem like they go together.

Clippers may be deep, but could age be their downfall?

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