Basketball is a young man’s game, a fact that only continues to expand year over year in the NBA.
The Phoenix Suns, meanwhile, will be leaning on 30-plus-year-old veterans throughout the 2026-27 season. All-Star Devin Booker will reach that milestone soon, but the old heads are becoming less and less common in the league we see today.
Older veterans becoming even more rare in modern NBA
Later this month, Booker, the face of the franchise, will celebrate his 30th birthday. In doing so, he’ll join teammates Dillon Brooks, Luke Kennard, Pat Spencer, and Duop Reath who’ve reached that threshold.
But 30, at least for now, marks the oldest age on the Suns roster—part of a growing trend league-wide.
NBA all-time scoring leader LeBron James continues to stun basketball fans as the 41-year-old staves off Father Time for another title run with the Philadelphia 76ers. He’s part of an era that’s slowly dwindling, a (freakishly talented) relic from a bygone era.
As basketball writer Kirk Goldsberry points out in a video posted to Instagram, nearly 55 percent of players in the league today are 25 years old or younger. Compare that to the 1999-00 season, when just 38 percent of the NBA were those young bloods.
Back at the turn of the century, roughly a third (34.2 percent) of the league was age 30 or older—as Phoenix team leaders Book and Brooks will be for the Suns this coming season. As of a season ago, that percentage has plummeted to just 17.5 percent of veterans aged 30 or older.
As the game focuses more on pace, athleticism and increasingly positionless basketball, older veterans are being phased out. Sure, there’s still plenty of value in having more seasoned veterans deep on your bench, but only the league’s biggest stars remain rotational standouts deep into their 30s.
It’s perhaps not a great sign for a Suns team whose two best players are in that dwindling demographic. Booker and Brooks will once again be tasked with shouldering the load offensively for the Suns, even though new addition Miles Bridges (28) and a healthy Jalen Green (24) are here to take some of the pressure off.
Over 80 percent of the players in the NBA today are aged 29 or younger. So, while James continues to make an impact into his 40s, a distinct lack of durability is more the norm we see from (relatively) older players.
How much more of Devin Booker's prime do the Suns have left?
Suns owner Mat Ishbia has made clear he intends to keep building around Booker in The Valley. But as those age demographics continue to shift, Suns fans know it’s a race against Father Time to get Book back to the NBA Finals. He reached the final showdown in 2021 when his team fell to Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks in six games.
Ten players on the Suns' roster are aged 25 or younger, five are in that 26-29 range, and (counting Booker) five are older than age 30. Phoenix is hoping youngsters like Green, Khaman Maluach and rookie Koa Peat can make an impact to elevate the team's ceiling this season. But even if the young guys play above expectations, the Suns' playoff hopes are still tied to the vets.
As the trends show, that's not a sustainable place to be in the modern NBA.
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