Youngest Age a Player could have been an NBA starter?

[NbaAllDay]

Piggybacking off the threat about what age Kareem could have played in the NBA.

What's the youngest a current or former NBA player could have come into the league and been a legitimate starter.

It might not always be a GOAT level player, they could have fit a perfect 3&D mold at 16 for example.

I think it still ends up being someone like Lebron? As early as 16 (15 could be argued) he could have been a legit starter. Obviously not having the impact he did as a Rookie, however he could have been a solid enough PG as his passing was already solid. He was also 6f5 as a freshman, and already had a frame more solid than a number of other players.

I'd be interested to see if Shaq could have done so as well? Kareem could have been a solid player at 16 too.

Interested to see if there were any others and why.

[Dr Positivity]

I think considering the time period, his style of play and personality, the answer has to be Kareem

[Jaivl]

Ricky Rubio at age 16. One could say he did not even improve those last years in FCB. At 17 he's a starting guard for Spain, so that's a lock.

[dygaction]

Luka played for the Real Madrid senior team at age 16 but not sure if he was nba ready back then. His stardom in the Euro league started at age 17, and I believe by then he could be an nba starter.

[feyki]

Luka played for the Real Madrid senior team at age 16 but not sure if he was nba ready back then. His stardom in the Euro league started at age 17, and I believe by then he could be an nba starter.

He was barely an nba starter in his rookie year.

Kobe and Moses Malone were at arguably all-star in their 19 ages. Don't remember any player was positive in the NBA, at the age 18.

[70sFan]

He was barely an nba starter in his rookie year.

What?

[Mazter]

Lebron James had 31 starts at age 18 averaging 20.2/5.9/6.1 in 40.2 minutes.
If he was born 4-5 months later he would have had a full rookie year at age 18, if he was born 33 days later Bbref would have us believe he was 18 during his rookie season. I believe he could have been a starter at 17, he might have been in the NBA at 16 if allowed and only as a publicity stunt but I don't think he would have been a starter.

[dygaction]

Luka played for the Real Madrid senior team at age 16 but not sure if he was nba ready back then. His stardom in the Euro league started at age 17, and I believe by then he could be an nba starter.

He was barely an nba starter in his rookie year.

Kobe and Moses Malone were at arguably all-star in their 19 ages. Don't remember any player was positive in the NBA, at the age 18.

He was a boarder line all star in his rookie year with 21p/7.8r/6.0a….There are 150 starters in NBA at any time.

[feyki]

Luka played for the Real Madrid senior team at age 16 but not sure if he was nba ready back then. His stardom in the Euro league started at age 17, and I believe by then he could be an nba starter.

He was barely an nba starter in his rookie year.

Kobe and Moses Malone were at arguably all-star in their 19 ages. Don't remember any player was positive in the NBA, at the age 18.

He was a boarder line all star in his rookie year with 21p/7.8r/6.0a….There are 150 starters in NBA at any time.

He's barely in top 100 at WS48, not in top 200 in individual offensive rating and not in top 250 in on court offensive rating.

[dygaction]

He was barely an nba starter in his rookie year.

Kobe and Moses Malone were at arguably all-star in their 19 ages. Don't remember any player was positive in the NBA, at the age 18.

He was a boarder line all star in his rookie year with 21p/7.8r/6.0a….There are 150 starters in NBA at any time.

He's barely in top 100 at WS48, not in top 200 in individual offensive rating and not in top 250 in on court offensive rating.

He never came off from the bench in his nba career and those things you listed did not prevent him from being immediately the new franchise player. He was also #11 in usage, #22 in BPM, #23 in VORP, #42 in PER... Sounds like a starter to me .

[feyki]

He was a boarder line all star in his rookie year with 21p/7.8r/6.0a….There are 150 starters in NBA at any time.

He's barely in top 100 at WS48, not in top 200 in individual offensive rating and not in top 250 in on court offensive rating.

He never came off from the bench in his nba career and those things you listed did not prevent him from being immediately the new franchise player. He was also #11 in usage, #22 in BPM, #23 in VORP, #42 in PER... Sounds like a starter to me .

Don't interest on PER,BPM, but 21/6 with -3 relative offensive rating player is not above average offensive player and also he was negative, defensively; positive player at the best. Probably top 100 player.

[dygaction]

He's barely in top 100 at WS48, not in top 200 in individual offensive rating and not in top 250 in on court offensive rating.

He never came off from the bench in his nba career and those things you listed did not prevent him from being immediately the new franchise player. He was also #11 in usage, #22 in BPM, #23 in VORP, #42 in PER... Sounds like a starter to me .

Don't interest on PER,BPM, but 21/6 with -3 relative offensive rating player is not above average offensive player and also he was negative, defensively; positive player at the best. Probably top 100 player.

Even that, top 100 player are more than solid starters considering there are 150 starters and some teams have better bench players than other teams' starters. Austin Rivers and Campazzo are starters on playoff teams.

[Mazter]

Anyone leading their team in starts, minutes and points is a starter. It's not even a debate.
I don't want to say someone thinking otherwise is stupid, but he is surely acting like it.
Especially if it's a player of his own franchise.

[Dutchball97]

He's barely in top 100 at WS48, not in top 200 in individual offensive rating and not in top 250 in on court offensive rating.

He never came off from the bench in his nba career and those things you listed did not prevent him from being immediately the new franchise player. He was also #11 in usage, #22 in BPM, #23 in VORP, #42 in PER... Sounds like a starter to me .

Don't interest on PER,BPM, but 21/6 with -3 relative offensive rating player is not above average offensive player and also he was negative, defensively; positive player at the best. Probably top 100 player.

Why do you place more value on WS/48 than BPM? Individual off/def ratings are also way too noisy. He had positive RAPTOR and LEBRON ratings as well and while not a star player yet he was by pretty much all metrics an above average starter.

[feyki]

He never came off from the bench in his nba career and those things you listed did not prevent him from being immediately the new franchise player. He was also #11 in usage, #22 in BPM, #23 in VORP, #42 in PER... Sounds like a starter to me .

Don't interest on PER,BPM, but 21/6 with -3 relative offensive rating player is not above average offensive player and also he was negative, defensively; positive player at the best. Probably top 100 player.

Why do you place more value on WS/48 than BPM? Individual off/def ratings are also way too noisy. He had positive RAPTOR and LEBRON ratings as well and while not a star player yet he was by pretty much all metrics an above average starter.

Don't value more WS, just don't consider PER(totally nonsense) and BPM(all-around obssesion, Westbrook was one of the best defensive player in the metric when he was net negative on that end ). I also think he was positive player, but not above average. Top 100, might; but not any further.

He never came off from the bench in his nba career and those things you listed did not prevent him from being immediately the new franchise player. He was also #11 in usage, #22 in BPM, #23 in VORP, #42 in PER... Sounds like a starter to me .

Don't interest on PER,BPM, but 21/6 with -3 relative offensive rating player is not above average offensive player and also he was negative, defensively; positive player at the best. Probably top 100 player.

Even that, top 100 player are more than solid starters considering there are 150 starters and some teams have better bench players than other teams' starters. Austin Rivers and Campazzo are starters on playoff teams.

I'd have starters as positive NBA players(or not negative at least). Technically, yes, there are 150 players, but all are not on that level.

[Texas Chuck]

Wow this thread got derailed....

Melo led Cuse to a national title as a freshman and was pretty solid as a rookie. Could he have started for a bad team 2 years before he did? Maybe?

Grant Hill was about as polished a college freshman as I can recall even filling in at PG when Hurley got hurt. I realize he played all 4 years at Duke, but could he have been an NBA starter as a high school senior? Maybe?

Couple more names that came to mind anyway.

[dygaction]

Did not watch Duncan early days in Wake Forest. He joined nba at 21. Was he a starter level player 3 or 4 years earlier? In 1994 (18yr old), he put up 16.8/12.5r/2.1a/4.2b. Seems to me yes. The year earlier at 17, 9.8p/9.6r/3.8b might gets him a starter position in a weak team.

[sp6r=underrated]

Did not watch Duncan early days in Wake Forest. He joined nba at 21. Was he a starter level player 3 or 4 years earlier? In 1994 (18yr old), he put up 16.8/12.5r/2.1a/4.2b. Seems to me yes. The year earlier at 17, 9.8p/9.6r/3.8b might gets him a starter position in a weak team.

Duncan picked up basketball seriously after Hurricane Hugo. I don't think he could make it. But your post reminded me of this story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2016/07/11/tim-duncans-legendary-career-began-by-dominating-alzono-mourning-at-age-16/

It was mostly a joke, of course — Odom knew the tiny Virgin Islands produced top-shelf college basketball players about as often as Antarctica. Except King didn’t take it as a joke. A gangly, soft-spoken kid with good hands and an expressionless face had stuck with him.

“Actually, there’s this one kid over there,” King said. “His name is Tim Duncan.”

Everybody knows him now, at the end. Duncan announced his retirement Monday morning after a 19-year NBA career that distinguished him as one of the best players in the sport’s history, perhaps the greatest power forward ever. He won five NBA titles and two MVPs and reached the playoffs 19 consecutive years. He led the building of a dynasty in San Antonio, the league’s smallest outpost, with uncommon dignity, a player of perfect fundamentals and pure substance.

At the start, the only person who knew Tim Duncan was Chris King. Duncan’s greatness, his competitive zeal and agile grace, probably would have surfaced no matter the path he took from St. Croix to college basketball to the NBA. But the arc of his career formed because of pure happenstance — because King took that trip, played against Duncan and decided to report back to the Wake Forest basketball offices.

“It’s a true story,” King said. “It’s a great story. And the rest is history.”

After King’s rookie season with the Seattle SuperSonics, his agent, Bob Kingsley, arranged a tour for NBA players to raise money and awareness following a spate of violence in the Virgin Islands. They gathered a ragtag team using any connections they could, and the biggest attraction they landed was Alonzo Mourning, who by that time had become a star.

When the NBA players arrived, word circulated about a 16-year-old, 6-foot-9 center with deft touch who used to be a star swimmer. King grew curious.

“Here comes this long, lanky kid,” King said. “He looked so young.”

Inside a packed gym, Duncan matched up against Mourning. Early on in the game, Duncan caught a pass on the block, turned, squared up and banked a shot in over Mourning. The rest of the night, King said, Duncan “dominated” Mourning. King figured Mourning was going through the motions in a charity game, but Duncan’s performance still blew him away.

“You could see he was a little raw, but you could see he had the touch,” King said. “When I saw him doing that on the low block, it was like, ‘Wow.’ Jump hook. Fade. This one play, I’ll never forget. Alonzo tried to go up. Tim blocked the shot, and he ran the floor like a deer. Someone threw it to him, and he dunked all over Alonzo.

“He’s playing against Alonzo Mourning. He’s 16. He’s dominating this guy. He’s running the floor. He has these great hands. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this kid can play!’ ”

And nobody in big-time college basketball had heard of him. It was 1992, before the Internet shrank the world and recruiting became an industry unto itself. Duncan hadn’t played organized basketball long enough for word to circulate. He had been on an Olympic swimming track until Hurricane Hugo destroyed St. Croix’s lone Olympic-sized pool. Duncan’s fear of sharks prevented him from swimming in the ocean. When his mother died of breast cancer when Duncan was 14, he lost what interest he had in swimming and sought solace in basketball.

King hadn’t learned all of that when he approached Duncan at the end of the NBA trip to the islands. “I was like, ‘I went to Wake, man. It might be a place for you,’ ” King said. “He was so quiet and shy. He kind of smiled.”

When King returned and told his old coach about Duncan, Odom perked up. He respected King’s opinion, and he wanted to know more. Odom asked King which island Duncan lived on.

“I don’t know,” King replied.

Which school?

“I don’t know.”

How could he get in touch?

“I don’t know.”

Odom met with his staff later that afternoon. Larry Davis, a first-year assistant, had coached at Oak Hill Academy and landed international players there. He thought he could find a lead.

“I didn’t think anything would come of it,” Odom said. Davis talked to an old friend, an assistant coach at Delaware, and later that day, Davis plopped information on Odom’s desk.

Odom arranged a trip to St. Croix to meet Duncan. He might not have been interested at all if Wake Forest didn’t have an extra scholarship, but since it did, Odom viewed Duncan as a possible flier. The Demon Deacons had already drawn commitments from two international big men, Makhtar N’Diaye from France and Ricky Peral from Spain, and Odom was certain both were better than Duncan.

Odom arrived alone on a Sunday afternoon to watch Duncan play pick-up games on an outdoor court. “There must have been 800 people there,” Odom said. As players chose up sides and vied for a spot on the floor, Duncan receded to the sidelines. Odom walked over to him, stupefied.

“Tim, you’re not going to play?” Odom asked him. “I came all this way. Aren’t you going to play?”

Duncan explained he would play, but only after the first game. If he played in the first game, he told Odom, the older players would put him on the worse team, and if he lost it would take all day for him to get back on the court. If he waited, he could pick his teammates, and Odom would have a better chance to evaluate him.

“The best thing about him was he had a sense of awareness that was almost never seen in domestic kids his age,” Odom said. “That’s the biggest compliment I can give him. Other kids, they’re not making that decision. He’s very introspective, and he’s always thinking ahead.”

Duncan proved himself right — once he got on the court, his team won and won, and Odom got to see what he came to St. Croix for. Duncan struck Odom as a “neophyte,” he said, with dexterous feet but a frail frame and natural, but unfinished, skills. Duncan’s seriousness continued to stand out. Between games, Duncan walked over to Odom and asked, “What do you think?”

“I think you’re good,” Odom said. “The only thing I haven’t seen is, you told me you had a jump hook.”

Duncan nodded and went back to the court. The next game, he nailed two or three of them. “He didn’t look refined,” Odom said. “He went out there with a purpose and got it done.”

Odom wasn’t overwhelmed, but he was impressed enough to offer that scholarship and redshirt Duncan, and Duncan accepted the offer.

“I would be less than honest if it ever came to my mind that I had an NBA player on my hands,” Odom said. “Certainly let alone that I had one of the five best basketball players to ever play in my lap.”

Even after fall practice, Odom still planned to redshirt Duncan in favor of N’Diaye and Peral. Wake Forest opened the season in the Great Alaska Shootout. Hours before the tip-off, Wake Forest’s compliance director called Odom, panicked, saying that the NCAA had raised questions about the eligibility of N’Diaye and Peral.

“I said, ‘What? We’re ready to play! ” Odom said. “My compliance guy said, You can’t play them. If you do, you risk forfeiture.’ I called the staff and told them, ‘I think we’re gonna have to play Duncan.’

“He scored maybe one point. But he blocked three or four shots. Got about six rebounds. The next night, a little bit better. Next night, a little bit better. We lost the first game, came back won the next two. We get back to Winston-Salem, and we still hadn’t gotten the eligibility cleared up. I just went with Duncan. We played at Vanderbilt on national TV. He scored nine points, had 11 rebounds and got five blocks. That was the night I said, ‘Don’t worry about the other two guys.’ ”

Everybody started to learn about Duncan, the quiet 7-footer who always made the right play, always found the right spot. His body filled out, his jump shots started falling, and he became the best player in college basketball, then one of the greatest winners in sports history. It started on a tiny island, with an exhibition game.

“I would have never guessed it,” Chris King said. “He was so well-mannered. He was never emotional. I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know if this kid has got the spunk to get to the NBA.’ I believed with the right coach, the right program, he could be a good college player.

“It’s like a book. Just to see the way he made the transition, and then become one of the best basketball players ever, probably a first-ballot Hall of Famer, it’s just shocking to me. This kid really worked and did what he was supposed to do and went about it in a very quiet and humble way. It’s really like a dream, like a Cinderella story.”

King and Duncan kept touch for years, and worked out together for a time in the offseason, but they’ve fallen out of contact. Duncan created a life in Texas, and King raised a son who is set to play at Wisconsin next season. King is tickled about whatever role he played in Duncan’s story. He still loves to talk about it, and every so often someone will bring it up.

“They’ll be like, ‘You think you can find us a Tim Duncan?’ ” King said. “It’s just hard to do.”
NBA free agency in 2016 has been a summer like no other. Here's where some of the star players landed. (Thomas Johnson, Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Luka played for the Real Madrid senior team at age 16 but not sure if he was nba ready back then. His stardom in the Euro league started at age 17, and I believe by then he could be an nba starter.

He was barely an nba starter in his rookie year.

Kobe and Moses Malone were at arguably all-star in their 19 ages. Don't remember any player was positive in the NBA, at the age 18.

It took Kobe a couple of years to reach All-Star level

[DQuinn1575]

The players to consider are
Two best high schoolers to go pro:
LeBron
Moses
both were top player in nation by far in high school, and both did real well first year

By far the Best players in their first college season:
Oscar
Wilt
Jabbar
Walton
These 4 guys had the most dominant first seasons in college basketball; each being the unquestioned player of the year their first season

Special category:
Doncic

Really dont think anybody else could beat all of these guys - all were really accomplished at a young age

1. Walton - improved a real lot his junior year of high school; so no way before his senior year. After his senior year he played for USA on FIBA World Team - he didnt play much on a poor USA team, so I would say No to NBA Starter as Senior.
2. LeBron - he improved a lot between his 1st and 2nd year in the NBA. If you try and think of any career trajectory from junior yr to 2nd year of pro, he gets placed below starter level as a junior in high school - So starts as a Senior.
3. Moses - improved a lot between soph and junior year of high school, so still on a growth curve. Maybe starts as a Senior, but not before.
4. Oscar - real similar to Moses in talent progression - became a superstar as high school junior, so dont think he starts in league until maybe Senior year.
5 Luka - everyone here on board as seen him at least as much as me, so use your own knowledge.
That leaves Wilt and Jabbar - they were both so dominant as high school sophs, probably the two best ever at that age. Size, strength, physicality would favor Wilt, as well as being in an easier era. I would like his chances better than Kareem, but they are probably the only two who could start in NBA as a high school junior.