A recurring theme among all the game threads here at Pistonsforum.com is Age. Playing our athletic youngsters; overplaying our aging core; relying on older veterans; matching up with a young opponent; it all boils down to the same thing. So with round one tucked away, I thought it’d be interesting to look at our age/minute distribution versus the regular season. The previous article outlined how we did as well as could be expected of a top seeded playoff team in distributing minutes to our younger guys. Below is the regular season distribution of total minutes. No surprises. Each starter got roughly 12% of the total minutes. Five other players got smaller slices of the pie and the rest came and went. The average age per minute was calculated by multiplying the age by the percentage of minutes and came out to 29.1. In the playoffs, we see a higher distribution of minutes among the top players and a shortening of the rotation as illustrated below. Despite the shift, the team’s average age increased to 29.3. Taking in to account the variances (this wasn’t rocket science…or even quasi-science), it’s really not much at all. One would think that increasing the minutes played by the over 30 gang and the perceived switch to Hunter and Ratliff would tip the scales a little more. However, it was Stuckey and Maxiell spearheading the youth infusion. Both got roughly 50% more of the share of minutes than they did in the regular season. There were a lot of factors contributing to the results: the extended garbage time in some games, McDyess’ injury opening a door for Maxiell, the demotion of Hayes, the fact that everyone is older now than at the start of the season. However, taken as a whole, it still all boils down to age, and it seems that the Pistons remain relatively consistent in that regard.
So even with the shortened rotation in the first round, the effective age of the team is still under 30, with over a quarter of minutes coming from younger players (Max, Stuck, AA, and AJ). Given the caliber of the older players and the relative inexperience of the younger ones, seems like a pretty good mix to me.
29 is a pretty optimal effective age IMO. It's very close to the best balance between athleticism and experience me thinks.
