Average ages: Start prime, peak, end prime

[Laimbeer]

What are the average ages a player

Starts his prime
Peaks
Ends his prime

[70sFan]

It depends on at what age he starts his NBA career.

[Timmaytime]

Looking at the top 40 peaks from this board, the average peak age is 26.2 years old.

youngest are Anthony Davis (21), Chris Paul (22) and Tracy Mcgrady (23)

oldest are Karl Malone (33), Dirk Nowitzki (32) and Steve Nash (32)

Kind of all across the board

Primes are way too hard to figure out

[Texas Chuck]

I'm a pretty big believer that for a star level player the sweet spot tends to be 27-32. Still young enough to have most of the physical gifts, but experienced enough to know how to take full advantage.

[Quotatious]

I don't think there's a rule for that. Like 70sFan said, it depends when a player enters the league, and how good is his durability and work ethic (these things are extremely important). For example, Karl Malone was still in his prime when he was 35+ years old, actually 37, in 2001, and a guy like Deron Williams was already past his prime at less than 30 years of age, in 2013-14 season, despite not having really serious, career-changing injuries (he's been dealing with lingering injuries for a few years now, but they are not game-changing like it was in Grant Hill's, Bernard KIng's or Derrick Rose's case, where they had to miss an entire season, you know what I mean. Deron never missed a really significant amount of games in any season, least games he played in a season was 64, in 82-game season, and 55, in 66-game lockout season in 2011-12. That's not a lot of missed games).

These are just two examples, but it should be enough to prove there's no general rule for prime beginning, end, or length.

In general, most players (assuming they stay healthy), tend to peak in their late 20s, around age 27-28. That's when they still have near-peak athleticism combined with enough experience and enough time to develop their skills, that they have their best seasons around that time. It's not a rule, though. For example Chris Paul, who has been fairly healthy throughout his career, arguably peaked at age 22/23, so very early, in 2007-08 season.

[Texas Chuck]

I For example Chris Paul, who has been fairly healthy throughout his career, arguably peaked at age 22/23, so very early, in 2007-08 season.

Strong overall post, Q. But this gives me an excuse to again post my somewhat controversial opinion that Chris Paul has been better the last couple seasons than he was in 08. I know statistically it's easier to make a case for 08 but just with his overall command of an offense. The Clippers have been elite offensively even without Blake(and let's face it he's a bad fit for Paul anyway) and beyond DeAndre at the rim and JJ's spacing, he's been doing it with very marginal offensive talent including some of the worst offensive players in the entire league getting big minutes.

[Quotatious]

I For example Chris Paul, who has been fairly healthy throughout his career, arguably peaked at age 22/23, so very early, in 2007-08 season.

Strong overall post, Q. But this gives me an excuse to again post my somewhat controversial opinion that Chris Paul has been better the last couple seasons than he was in 08. I know statistically it's easier to make a case for 08 but just with his overall command of an offense. The Clippers have been elite offensively even without Blake(and let's face it he's a bad fit for Paul anyway) and beyond DeAndre at the rim and JJ's spacing, he's been doing it with very marginal offensive talent including some of the worst offensive players in the entire league getting big minutes.

Right, but CP3 has never had a better combination of great stats and very respectable team success than he had in 2007-08 season. That's also the highest he ever reached in MVP voting, finishing as a fairly close second after Kobe (and deservedly so). I don't think his supporting cast in '08 was better than what he's had in LA. David West was pretty good but Griffin is clearly better, DeAndre is a bit better than the Chandler version that CP3 played with, and '08 Peja was hardly better than what we saw from JJ Redick for the last few seasons.

Paul was incredibly mature as a player and leader, honestly I think players as good and mature as he was at age 22 can be counted on the fingers of one hand - Russell, Magic, Bird, Duncan, that's probably it.

Also, while it's correct that CP3 controls the pace and runs his teams better today than he did in '08, he's not as absurdly quick and unstoppable off the dribble as he was in '08, so I think these things even out. He was already among the most clever point guards in the league in '08. He improved at that a little bit, but not very drastically.

Paul had his second best statistical season in 2008 (second after 2009), led his team to 56 wins (one less win than his career-high 57 with the Clippers in 2014, but the Clippers kept winning when CP3 was out for about 15-20 games in January, so I'm not sure if their team record in '14 is really a pro-CP3 argument), and he came as close to making WCF as ever (lost game 7 to defending champion Spurs). He also put up 30+ PER and 12+ BPM for 12 playoff games in 2008 (these are just absurd numbers, something that only Kareem, Jordan and LeBron were able to do for more than 10 playoff games), stepping up his game compared to the regular season, and I'm sure you remember how he owned Jason Kidd in the first round (when Kidd was still relatively in his prime, and still an elite defender). Losing to defending NBA champions led by prime Duncan/Ginobili/Parker in the second playoff series of your career while averaging 24/4/11 on good efficiency is nothing to be ashamed of...

[Texas Chuck]

Strong rebuttal Q.

[Colbinii]

I For example Chris Paul, who has been fairly healthy throughout his career, arguably peaked at age 22/23, so very early, in 2007-08 season.

Strong overall post, Q. But this gives me an excuse to again post my somewhat controversial opinion that Chris Paul has been better the last couple seasons than he was in 08. I know statistically it's easier to make a case for 08 but just with his overall command of an offense. The Clippers have been elite offensively even without Blake(and let's face it he's a bad fit for Paul anyway) and beyond DeAndre at the rim and JJ's spacing, he's been doing it with very marginal offensive talent including some of the worst offensive players in the entire league getting big minutes.

Def agree with this. Another thing to note is that Chris Paul has been every bit of a player the past 5 seasons as he was in 2008. A couple breaks here and there and his peak could be any of 7 different seasons. The difference between CP3's "Peak" and 5th or 7th best season is so miniscule.

That brings us to prime, which you and I both discussed yesterday was basically an opinionated stance on how we measure and value impact. Prime's for ATG are generally early-mid 20's through early-mid 30's.

[Laimbeer]

Looking at the top 40 peaks from this board, the average peak age is 26.2 years old.

youngest are Anthony Davis (21), Chris Paul (22) and Tracy Mcgrady (23)

oldest are Karl Malone (33), Dirk Nowitzki (32) and Steve Nash (32)

Kind of all across the board

Primes are way too hard to figure out

Younger than I would have guessed. I wonder how the ages of the early entry guys compare to those who stayed longer in school. That would test the "mileage v. age" debate.

[KidPistol]

As someone stated before. The peak age for me from what I've noticed is a tie between 29 - 30. Not too old where they are aging their skillset away but not to young where they make stupid mistakes intellectually. 27 is the beginning of a prime and 34 is the ending of it or at least it's that way for many of the all-time greats.

[feyki]

22-34 for prime , 24-28 for peak . But it's generally .

[SunKing]

I'm a pretty big believer that for a star level player the sweet spot tends to be 27-32. Still young enough to have most of the physical gifts, but experienced enough to know how to take full advantage.

This but you have to take mileage in account especially nowadays with one and done, and players being thrown in the NBA jungle so early where a lot just get lost whereas others just get better so much sooner than eras before.

So in terms of mileage, IMHO and ROUGHLY for star players with good health/no freak injury :

You enter your prime by season 4, you peak from season 6 to 10, your prime end in season 14.

By my reasoning, if you apply this to player :
LeBron entered his prime in 06-07, peaked from 08-09 to 12-13 and supposedly this year is his last prime season.
Dirk entered his prime in 01-02, peaked from 03-04 to 07-08 and suposedly ended his prime in 2011-2012.
Kobe entered his prime in 99-00, peaked from 01-02 to 05-06 and supposedly ended his prime in 2009-2010.
Pippen entered his prime in 90-91, peaked from 92-93 to 96-97 and supposedly ended his prime in 2000-2001.

I will not continue, I'm off by some years for some, but roughly I think that's pretty much it. Kobe work ethic and conditionning kept him as a tremendous scorer for 2 more season but his D got clearly worse while Scottie was done in his prime in that 98 season and also he entered the league as an old ass rookie, old school style. I think PER-wise it's not too bad.

We already saw peak Magic Johnson but illness stole us 2 prime years out of him.
It would be the last year of peak Durant, and GSW will still have prime KD but we already saw the best out of him.
Kawhi is just entering his peak.

That doesn't strike me as a bad range