The next generation of NBA stars is incredibly promising, and many of them are still young enough to be undergraduate students in college.
Now that the NBA’s 2022-23 season is more than halfway done, we’ve decided to re-rank the 23 best players who are under 23 years old. But why 23? Well, it is not just because that was the number worn by Michael Jordan.
Typically, NBA publications rank 25 players under 25 years old. You can read versions of that here, here, and here. I wanted to try a similar thought experiment, but U25 was too much of a challenge because it is such a wide population.
By the time NBA players are 25 years old, many have already graduated to their second contract and are in vastly different chapters of their careers than the league’s young players. It is harder to compare players like Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum, who will each earn more than $30 million next season, to players on rookie scale contracts.
This story was originally published before the season began, and you can see each player’s previous ranking below their name.
For this exercise, all players included must be born after Feb. 1, 2000. We chose that date because the listed age on Basketball Reference is how old a player is on Jan. 31 of each season.
Additionally, the following rankings are based on performance so far this season, and it is not predictive of their future success or their potential in the league.
NOTE: That means players like Darius Garland (who was born on Jan. 26, 2000) and Cade Cunningham or Chet Holmgren (who are injured for the season) were excluded.