Does age matter in the NBA Draft? Plus, Bronny James’ draft status and the Nuggets’ CBA problem

Age has always been a tricky subject when it comes to the NBA Draft. Youth is seen as a sign of potential and growth. The players taken at the top of the draft tend to be among the youngest; their talents so visible at an early age that they could come out after just one year of college.

But the 2024 NBA Draft, already the funkiest in roughly a decade, could cause one more issue for NBA teams: What are they going to do about all those older players?

This year, teams may be presented with that question more than they’d like. Six players 22 and older seem to have a decent chance to go in the first 20 picks (they’re in the top 30 of The Athletic’s latest big board), though in a draft as murky as this one, it’s hard to be certain.

Tennessee wing Dalton Knecht might go in the top 10. Providence guard Devin Carter just tagged an impressive junior year with some strong testing at the draft combine. Purdue center Zach Edey is one of the most interesting players in the draft and projected to be a fringe lottery pick. Marquette point guard Tyler Kolek, Colorado forward Tristan da Silva and Creighton wing Baylor Scheierman are all projected first-round picks who could land higher than expected on draft night.

That will again bring an important question to the forefront as teams make their decisions: Does age matter in the draft?

Players who have been selected that high at 22 years or older have not, for the most part, gone on to productive NBA careers. There have been 30 players who have been at least 22 on the day of the draft selected over the last 15 years. Of those, roughly three have become reliable starter-level players (Buddy Hield, Cam Johnson and Kelly Olynyk). Taurean Prince has consistently been a rotation player over his career. Corey Kispert, Obi Toppin and Jaime Jaquez Jr. seem to be on their way to getting there. The rest is a mixed bag.

The 2024 draft class, however, comes with certain qualifiers that didn’t apply in years past. It’s older for a number of reasons. Some players were in college for the 2020-21 COVID season, which wreaked havoc on college basketball and slowed down development as schools had to work through health and safety restrictions and on-court time management. The NCAA granted an extra year of college eligibility because of that year.

Other players may have stayed in school longer because of the money they can make from NIL, which hadn’t even been a consideration until the summer of 2021. Coincidentally, the number of players who declared early has dropped in each draft since 2021.

This year’s draft will be an interesting case study. Does age still matter as much to teams when they make a pick? And does age impact a prospect’s success if external factors like extra eligibility and NIL are putting them into the NBA later in life?

Since the playoffs are still going, only the 27 teams that aren’t still playing have fully shifted to draft mode, but that hasn’t stopped some of the churn. One interesting note came this week from The Athletic’s Shams Charania. He reported that the Phoenix Suns are considering Bronny James with their No. 22 pick. If James does get drafted there — proper qualifiers added and implied here — that might just be one of the most unconventional first-round picks in recent memory.

No, not because it’s Bronny James. But because of his current standing approaching the draft. Say what you will about groupthink and media mock drafts and evaluations, but teams don’t stray too far from it in the first round.

Right now, Bronny James is the No. 57 prospect on Rookie Scale’s consensus NBA draft board. If he’s taken 22nd, that would mean the Suns took him 35 spots ahead of his consensus ranking.

That would be the biggest difference between draft slot and consensus ranking over the last five years. The Memphis Grizzlies took Santi Aldama 30th in 2021 when he was 54th on the consensus board and David Roddy 23rd in 2022 when he was 45th. The New York Knicks took Immanuel Quickley 25th in 2020, when he was No. 48 on the consensus board.

Even if James is picked 30th overall in the first round, he would still be the biggest outlier first-round pick since 2020 compared to the consensus board.

But that’s also as of now. There’s still about another month to go until the draft and it’s plausible that James can make a move up the public boards, and thus the consensus board, and make this point less pronounced.

The new, more restrictive collective bargaining agreement rules are set to kick in this summer (get your refresher here) and it has been interesting to hear some top executives around the league bemoan the difficulties of building their teams under one set of rules and now having to operate under more punitive ones. One team to watch closely will be the Denver Nuggets.

Denver went into the luxury tax this season but it was just the first time in over a decade. Next season, will be another issue. Not only are the Nuggets in the tax for the 2024-25 season, they are projected to be over the second apron if the salary cap is at $141 million as presently forecasted.

That obviously raises some issues for the franchise, and those were well-voiced earlier this month by team president Josh Kroenke, the son of franchise owner Stan Kroenke.

“The core of this team was assembled under a different CBA, and we drafted and we developed, and we built this team under a different set of rules,” Kroenke told reporters. “Those rules have kinda changed on the fly. Last summer, it wasn’t quite as pertinent as it is going be this summer … There’s going to be some constraints coming in with the new collective bargaining agreement and the new rules that we’re going to have to be very aware of and we’re going to have to plan accordingly. They do make it difficult to retool a championship roster on the fly.”

If that didn’t sound like a commitment to go into the second apron if necessary, that’s because it wasn’t. Kroenke had further opportunities to do so later on during the Nuggets’ end-of-season news conference and didn’t in those times either.

General manager Calvin Booth was asked if the Nuggets would go over the second apron to keep Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and he said that the team would like to bring him back. Caldwell-Pope has a $15.4 million player option for next season and can likely make more on the open market if he exercises it.

“We spend a lot of time looking at second apron and all that stuff,” Booth said. “For me personally, it’s win a championship, one. Two, we have to look at the overall financial picture. And three, second apron. I know the second apron is daunting and there’s all kind of restrictions, but I don’t think that’s first on our priority list. KCP has been a great addition the last couple of years. We’d love to have him back. We’re going to take a hard look at what that looks like.”

Still, Kroenke announced a championship-or-bust window for the Nuggets two years ago and he said he remains tied to that perspective. But he did express some queasiness about the second apron. In a few months, we shall see how Denver rectifies those two beliefs and which path it takes.

“When you’re talking about some of the penalties that the league has put in on the fly involving the second apron, things of that nature, it’s very onerous when you start talking about possibly foregoing future draft picks if you get caught in a certain place,” Kroenke said. “Some organizations, they’ll be happy paying whatever they could to have the potential to win a championship; when you start talking about draft picks that’s when you get people’s attention pretty quick. Last summer, it wasn’t something that was as prevalent heading into this summer but I said it two years ago at a press conference when I was doing it by myself and I don’t know how many people took me seriously at the time because we hadn’t actually won it but when Nikola Jokić is on your roster, you’re going for it. You have the best player in the world and you have a responsibility to him and the group to try go for it.

“For Nikola, for Jamal (Murray), for Michael (Porter Jr.), for everybody that we’ve kind of grown and developed over the course of time, I think that’s our responsibility. There’s obviously different conversations that come with going for it when you start talking about some of the penalties that we’re talking about. We’re going to be aggressive. We still think we have one of the best teams in the league with a really good chance of winning it next year.”

(Top photo of Bronny James: Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images)