The Los Angeles Clippers have made history in the NBA by putting together the oldest team ever recorded in the league, with an average age of 33.2 years for the 2025-26 season. With the recent additions of players such as Paul, Beal and Lopez, the team is full of veterans.
The team’s line-up responds to a clear strategy: to rely on experience as the path to the ring. The roster includes figures such as Chris Paul (40 years old), Brook Lopez (37), James Harden (35), Kawhi Leonard (34) and Nicolas Batum (36), all of whom have years of experience at the elite level and many games under their belts.
The possible starting five would be James Harden, Bradley Beal, Kawhi Leonard, John Collins (also a new addition) and Ivica Zubac, while the bench provides even more experience with the likes of Chris Paul, Lopez, Batum and Kris Dunn.
The only young players on the team under contract are Kobe Brown (25), Swiss rookie Yanic Niederhauser (22) and Cam Christie (20). They also have 22-year-old Patrick Baldwin, 20-year-old Trentyn Flowers and 23-year-old Kobe Sanders on two-way contracts. They are the future in a project that undoubtedly prioritizes the present.
Head coach Tyronn Lue will have to carefully manage his players’ fitness throughout a demanding 82-game regular season. The big challenge will be to avoid injuries and keep key players with a delicate medical history, such as Leonard or Harden, fresh.
A very risky gamble for the NBA
With this move, the Clippers not only break a statistical record, but also position themselves as one of the most unique projects of the modern NBA era: a team built almost entirely on the basis of experience.
If health respects them and the chemistry works, they could prove that veteran status is still synonymous with competitiveness. Otherwise, they will remain a very risky experiment in search of a ring that seems very difficult.
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