When former Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan made his iconic championship-winning shot over Utah Jazz forward Bryon Russell in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, it was the end of an era in more ways than one.
Jordan was 35 years old when he led the Bulls in scoring in the last of their six championships. Since then, no player at that age has been the leading playoff scorer for a champion, and only one other NBA club has been led in postseason scoring by someone 35 or older: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the 1984-85 Los Angeles Lakers at age 38.
That's interesting context as the NBA's older generation of MVPs tries to add another ring to their collection. Stephen Curry, the next oldest leading scorer for a title winner after Abdul-Jabbar and Jordan at 34 with the 2021-22 Golden State Warriors, turned 36 on Thursday. Kevin Durant, who celebrated his 35th birthday on Sept. 29, is slightly older now than Jordan was for his last championship. And LeBron James, who some could argue offers a bubble asterisk to this stat, would be the oldest leading scorer for a champion ever at 39.
All three stars began the season with legitimate hope of turning back the clock and winning another title. Now, as they battle to avoid the Western Conference play-in tournament, they're looking like long shots of varying degrees.
What does history tell us about their chances of hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy again?
Aging curve for NBA champions
The distribution of ages for the leading playoff scorer on that year's NBA champion looks a lot like what you'd expect.
The most common age is 28, about the typical peak for NBA players, with a fairly normal distribution around that point, and Abdul-Jabbar as the lone outlier. Switching our perspective from leading scorer to Finals MVP adds two more 35-year-olds: Wilt Chamberlain for the 1971-72 Lakers and LeBron for the 2019-20 Lakers.
Both of those examples are typical of how superstars have been able to extend their championship window: by pairing with younger star players. Chamberlain was nearly 36 in 1971-72, his penultimate NBA season, but finished fourth in scoring on a Lakers team led by Gail Goodrich (29) and Jerry West (33). In the Finals, Chamberlain was able to control the paint against a New York Knicks team playing without Finals MVP center Willis Reed, averaging 19.4 points and 23.2 rebounds in the Lakers' 4-1 series win.
It's amusing that James took a slight back seat offensively to Anthony Davis during the Lakers' 2020 title run, when he averaged 25.3 points to Davis' 26.1 in the regular season and scored two fewer total points in the playoffs en route to the title, but has since surpassed AD in scoring at age 39. LeBron's 25.1 points are slightly less than he averaged in 2019-20, while Davis is down to 24.7 points this season.
It's possible that James and Durant (averaging 28.5 points to Devin Booker's 27.5 this season) could end up as their teams' second-leading scorers in the playoffs, should they get there. And that scenario is far more common. Four different players have been the second-leading scorer for champions at age 35 or older. Abdul-Jabbar (in 1981-82), James and Sam Jones for the 1968-69 Boston Celtics were all 35, while Tim Duncan was 38 in 2013-14 when the San Antonio Spurs won the last of their four titles with him.
That case is much harder to make with Curry, whose 26.9 points are nearly 10 per game more than any other Warriors player. Although Curry was easily Golden State's leading scorer during the title run, the Warriors had more balance then with Klay Thompson averaging 19.0 points in the playoffs and Jordan Poole contributing 17.0 off the bench.
Finding realistic paths to the title
Durant seems to have the best chance of this group to win a championship this season. Phoenix would make the playoffs without having to navigate the play-in tournament if the season ended today, and the Suns have shown more upside than the Lakers and Golden State at full strength. Phoenix is 15-9 (.625) with the trio of Durant, Booker and Bradley Beal healthy, a 50-win pace.
Among the 23 lineups who have seen at least 250 minutes of action this season, the Suns' starting five ranks fourth in net rating at plus-13.2 points per 100 possessions with the single best offensive rating (128.6) in this group, according to NBA Advanced Stats. And the addition of Royce O'Neale at the trade deadline has improved Phoenix's depth if the starters are all healthy for the playoffs. As a result, the Suns have the best title odds of this group: plus-1800 at ESPN BET, which is also tied for fifth best in the league.
Three games back of Phoenix and the Sacramento Kings entering play Thursday, the Lakers still have an outside shot of avoiding the play-in. Depending on how the standings shake out, there could be a relatively favorable path for the Lakers returning to the conference finals, as ESPN's Tim Bontemps laid out during our appearance on Monday's episode of Brian Windhorst & the Hoop Collective.
That path would likely start against the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are 44-17 (.721) against the rest of the league but 1-3 against the Lakers after a March 4 loss in L.A. No other team has beaten Oklahoma City more than twice this season. The Lakers' frontcourt size and playoff experience make them a nightmare matchup for the Thunder, who wouldn't be the kind of heavy favorite in a first-round series their record would imply.
Next, the Lakers would want to be on the other side of the bracket from the defending champion Denver Nuggets after last year's conference finals sweep. The Nuggets swept this year's season series (3-0), extending their head-to-head winning streak to eight games. The Lakers last beat Denver in December 2022. Given that track record, the Lakers making the Finals after winning the inaugural NBA in-season tournament is an unlikely scenario.
The Lakers are in better shape than the Warriors, who are a game back of them for ninth in the West. With a road-heavy remaining schedule (10 of their final 17 games are away from the Bay) and Curry coming back from an ankle sprain that's sidelined him the past three games, Golden State will be hard-pressed to move out of the bottom two play-in spots. That would require the Warriors to win twice, at least once on the road, just to make the playoffs.
Down the road, Golden State has the most plausible chance of this group of developing a star to aid Curry. Jonathan Kuminga has averaged 20.2 points over the past two months and is still just 21, while fellow 21-year-old Brandin Podziemski has been an immediate contributor as a rookie.
Although Chamberlain and LeBron each won titles at age 35 by teaming up with established stars in L.A., several of the other extended championship windows have been the product of internal development. The 1968-69 Celtics, still featuring Jones and Bill Russell, were led in scoring by 29-year-old John Havlicek while Kawhi Leonard's emergence as a Finals MVP at age 22 in San Antonio helped Duncan win a title at age 38.
The rosy vision of the Warriors' "light years" philosophy almost certainly won't come to fruition in time to salvage a deep 2024 playoff run, however.