Nostalgia never stops. Vintage is always in for a culture sprinting to be first in line to future endeavors.
Fashion for teenagers is a not-so-subtle reminder of the gray hairs I’ll find on the side of my head, TikTok has turned songs that are 25 years old back into hits and the top movies at the box office domestically this year have been about a computer game made in 2011, another Lilo & Stitch, a new Superman and the seventh movie from the Jurassic Park franchise.
The NBA this season is jumping into the pool of reboots with their return to NBC, queuing up John Tesh’s Roundball Rock to deliver memories of the 1990s. Look at how NBC advertised its opening slate of the Houston Rockets playing the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Warriors facing the Los Angeles Lakers, going full NBA Jam with Tesh’s theme song playing in the background of old video game sounds.
The four players highlighted in order are Kevin Durant, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Steph Curry and LeBron James. The last that comes to mind among the four is the 27-year-old reigning NBA MVP whose team won the championship last season.
As the Warriors lean on three players in their mid-to-late 30s, the entire NBA will continue to go all-in on O.L.D. until the wheels fall off on three of the game’s greatest to ever play. Who can blame them, too?
When the Rockets, Thunder, Warriors and Lakers take the court for opening night, Oklahoma City’s ring celebration will be in the background of viewers. An afterthought to how Durant will fit on the new-look Rockets and his reaction to his former team hanging a championship banner 10 seasons after he left. Nearly completely forgotten about once all attention turns to Southern California with Steph and LeBron stealing the show once again.
All 30 seconds of NBC’s Warriors hype video on Instagram are highlights of Curry (37 years old), Jimmy Butler (36 years old on opening night) and Draymond Green (35 years old). Brandin Podziemski isn’t exactly those players, and it’s hard when the Warriors are comprised of only nine players at the moment.
From the Warriors’ standpoint, they better hope Curry continues to push the boundaries of age after playing at least 70 games for the second straight season and being named All-NBA for the 11th consecutive year he has played a full season. Green finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting last season, but his body can only handle so much after more than a decade of slaying Goliaths. Butler proved to be a perfect fit almost immediately after joining the Warriors. He also hasn’t played 65 games or more since the 2018-19 season.
“You look at the league right now, I know there’s a lot of youth taking over,” Curry said three months ago after the 2024-25 NBA season. “But we were one of the last eight teams that realistically had a shot, and if you can run that back, make some tweaks that can help our overall roster – obviously you’ve got to get through an 82-game season, like I said – and you want to be in a position where you’re not chasing, but I feel like we had enough that we showed we could be that team. That’s all you really want.”
That’s also all the league really wants. Same goes with the Lakers and Rockets.
There are clear reasons all three teams are playing on opening night and on Christmas. The Warriors’ final NBA Cup game of Group Play will be their first time playing Durant and the Rockets, and the Lakers’ last NBA Cup game of Group Play is them hosting former teammate Anthony Davis and the Dallas Mavericks. Between cable and streaming services, the Warriors this season are playing in a franchise-record 34 nationally televised games.
Like everything else in the Warriors’ universe, it all starts with Steph being the ultimate showman.
This isn’t to discredit youth and the inevitable reality that a new batch of stars will soon dictate the state of basketball. Luka Dončić , 26, had the most-popular jersey by NBAStore.com sales last season. Curry finished second, and James was third. Dončić became the first player since the 2012-13 season to lead in jersey sales ahead of Curry or James.
The trio of Curry, Durant and James also bring back a time of American stardom in the NBA. The three went five straight seasons of winning the MVP from 2012 to 2016, followed by two more American-born players in Russell Westbrook and James Harden holding the hardware. Since then, the MVP has gone to a foreign-born player in seven straight seasons as basketball continues to expand globally in its parity era of a new champion the last seven years as well.
Already, the torch has touched the hands of Anthony Edwards for stretches. Let’s be real, stakeholders are begging for Cooper Flagg to run with it. Until the final flicker of light burns out on Steph, LeBron and KD, it’s still their league and the NBA still will operate knowing that to be the truth.
Just like they should, holding onto the last breath of greatness as long as possible.
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