With the Nuggets relying on young players for a huge amount of the teams minutes, I decided to look at who the youngest teams in the NBA weighted by minutes played. For example, if player A (30 years old) plays 32 minutes, and player B (20 years old) plays 16, then the average age weighted by minutes played between them would be (32*30 + 16*20) / (32+16) ~ 26.67, as opposed to an unweighted average of 25 years.
Ages are accurate to the day, and represent their age on Sep 30, 2017.
Here are the results from youngest to oldest:
| TEAM | Adj Age | Rank | SRS |
| LAL | 23.79 | 1 | -2.88 |
| PHO | 24.09 | 2 | -7.19 |
| BOS | 24.84 | 3 | 4.26 |
| DEN | 24.92 | 4 | 1.07 |
| CHI | 24.97 | 5 | -5.55 |
| BRK | 25.52 | 6 | -3.77 |
| MIL | 25.60 | 7 | -0.28 |
| PHI | 25.74 | 8 | 1.62 |
| POR | 25.75 | 9 | 0.65 |
| ORL | 25.78 | 10 | -4.6 |
| DET | 26.03 | 11 | 0.4 |
| TOR | 26.12 | 12 | 7.07 |
| ATL | 26.32 | 13 | -4.62 |
| MIA | 26.50 | 14 | -1.06 |
| IND | 26.54 | 15 | 0.57 |
| MEM | 26.74 | 16 | -2.37 |
| CHO | 26.78 | 17 | 0.13 |
| SAC | 26.94 | 18 | -7.93 |
| NYK | 27.02 | 19 | -1.69 |
| WAS | 27.05 | 20 | 1.51 |
| MIN | 27.23 | 21 | 3.31 |
| LAC | 27.34 | 22 | 0.41 |
| UTA | 27.44 | 23 | 1.74 |
| OKC | 27.47 | 24 | 3.4 |
| NOP | 28.34 | 25 | -0.13 |
| DAL | 28.50 | 26 | -1.58 |
| GSW | 29.16 | 27 | 7.98 |
| SAS | 29.46 | 28 | 2.43 |
| HOU | 29.73 | 29 | 7.86 |
| CLE | 31.39 | 30 | -0.57 |
Some takeaways:
-Boston is really good (4th best SRS), and really young (3rd youngest). It's hard to see them not being contenders in the future (if they aren't already). They are my choice to be the team to beat once we reach the post-Warriors era.
-It surprised me that 6 out of the 12 youngest teams have a positive SRS (Denver, Philadelphia, Portland, Toronto, and Detroit represent the other four). Also, Milwaukee (#7) despite slightly missing the cut is sitting 5th in the east with a 29-23 record.
-There is however a positive correlation between average age and SRS of 0.4068 (R^2 = 0.1655)
-8 of the 9 oldest teams are in the west.
-The Nuggets should be in very good shape going forward being the second youngest team to boast a winning record and positive SRS. Their average age will certainly rise when Millsap returns, but over the next couple of years the Nuggets should expect to gain a lot of ground in the West simply from internal development.
