The best part of this mid-October section of the NBA calendar is the anticipation of what’s coming. The breakouts, the upside, the leaps, the superstar ascents—nothing beats dreaming about the league’s best young players rising to reach their potential.
In that spirit, we’re ranking the top young cores around the NBA.
To be considered, players must be 24 or younger in the coming season. We’ll use Basketball Reference’s cutoff to keep things clean. If you’re under 25 on Feb. 1, 2025, you’re in.
From there, the criteria is hazier. Quality and quantity are considerations. Generally speaking, one player does not make up a true core.
We’ll weigh the sheer amount of young talent on a roster, consider its expected ceiling and give some weight to what, if anything, it has accomplished to this point. The future matters most, but there are few better predictors of what’s ahead than what’s already come to pass.
If a core has already won big, that’ll often give it an edge over a group whose future success is still entirely speculative.
If you’re looking for the NBA’s fast-rising squads ahead of 2024-25, this is a great place to start.
5. Detroit Pistons.
Other than Cunningham, there’s not much certainty in the Detroit Pistons’ core. And even he comes with just one relatively complete season of promising play. Sure, Cunningham finished third in Rookie of the Year voting in 2021-22, but his sophomore season was almost entirely lost to injury and his breakout campaign last year came with a team that won just 14 games.
Still, last season’s 22.7 points, 7.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds reaffirmed the idea that Cunningham can be a cornerstone.
Everyone else around him is a speculative option, and some (looking at you, Ivey) are closing in on their last chances to prove they can fit next to Cunningham for the long haul.
Thompson is preposterously athletic and has All-Defensive potential, perhaps as soon as this season. Duren, somehow only 21 as he enters his third year, has real offensive gifts and excellent size at center. If he proves he can defend capably in the middle, it’ll matter even more than Ivey demonstrating he can knock down threes.
Stewart, a four-year vet with 177 career starts, is the most established name here. Undersized as a 5, he’s still a tremendous rebounder and hustle player whose 38.3 percent hit rate on threes last year suggests he could stick in a winning rotation.
Holland is the wild card—a 19-year-old wing with all the tools in the world but no track record to speak of.
4. San Antonio Spurs
The best part of this mid-October section of the NBA calendar is the anticipation of what’s coming. The breakouts, the upside, the leaps, the superstar ascents—nothing beats dreaming about the league’s best young players rising to reach their potential.
In that spirit, we’re ranking the top young cores around the NBA.
To be considered, players must be 24 or younger in the coming season. We’ll use Basketball Reference’s cutoff to keep things clean. If you’re under 25 on Feb. 1, 2025, you’re in.
From there, the criteria is hazier. Quality and quantity are considerations. Generally speaking, one player does not make up a true core.
We’ll weigh the sheer amount of young talent on a roster, consider its expected ceiling and give some weight to what, if anything, it has accomplished to this point. The future matters most, but there are few better predictors of what’s ahead than what’s already come to pass.
If a core has already won big, that’ll often give it an edge over a group whose future success is still entirely speculative.
If you’re looking for the NBA’s fast-rising squads ahead of 2024-25, this is a great place to start.
5. Detroit Pistons
The Core: Cade Cunningham (23), Ausar Thompson (22), Jaden Ivey (22), Jalen Duren (21), Isaiah Stewart (23), Ron Holland (19)
Other than Cunningham, there’s not much certainty in the Detroit Pistons’ core. And even he comes with just one relatively complete season of promising play. Sure, Cunningham finished third in Rookie of the Year voting in 2021-22, but his sophomore season was almost entirely lost to injury and his breakout campaign last year came with a team that won just 14 games.
Still, last season’s 22.7 points, 7.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds reaffirmed the idea that Cunningham can be a cornerstone.
Everyone else around him is a speculative option, and some (looking at you, Ivey) are closing in on their last chances to prove they can fit next to Cunningham for the long haul.
Thompson is preposterously athletic and has All-Defensive potential, perhaps as soon as this season. Duren, somehow only 21 as he enters his third year, has real offensive gifts and excellent size at center. If he proves he can defend capably in the middle, it’ll matter even more than Ivey demonstrating he can knock down threes.
Stewart, a four-year vet with 177 career starts, is the most established name here. Undersized as a 5, he’s still a tremendous rebounder and hustle player whose 38.3 percent hit rate on threes last year suggests he could stick in a winning rotation.
Holland is the wild card—a 19-year-old wing with all the tools in the world but no track record to speak of.
4. San Antonio Spurs
The Core: Victor Wembanyama (21), Jeremy Sochan (21), Devin Vassell (24), Stephon Castle (20)
If you’re high on Stephon Castle or Jeremy Sochan, we’re not really cutting any corners here. If you’re not, then Victor Wembanyama and Devin Vassell are missing a third counterpart in the San Antonio Spurs’ young core.
But you know what? Wemby is exceptional, so we’re making an exception. Who needs three prospects when you’ve got the best one?
Think of it this way: The executives of the three teams we haven’t reached yet in the rankings might consider swapping their cores for San Antonio’s solely because of Wemby. It’s not a given, but there’d be a conversation.
The Pistons, who we already mentioned, would swap their collection of young talent for Wembanyama alone. And they’d do it in a heartbeat. That’s to say nothing of the entire rest of the league, who’d give up everyone they have under the age of 25 for the reigning Rookie of the Year.
Wemby is a generational mega-talent, the kind of player who can set a franchise up for a decade or more.
Vassell is already four years into his career and on his second contract, but it’s pretty clear his growth process is far from over. He averaged a career-high 19.5 points per game last year and set new personal bests with a 57.8 true shooting percentage and 4.1 assists per game. All three of those numbers—scoring average, true shooting and assist average—have trended up in each year of the shooting guard’s career.
Sochan is a positionless glue guy with a variety of skills and shooting questions. His combo-forward size and versatile game give the Spurs options, and they even messed around with him as a point guard (mostly unsuccessfully) last year. If Castle’s athleticism and defensive potential develop as expected, he’ll give San Antonio one more piece of the puzzle.
3. Orlando Magic.
Paolo Banchero has already made an All-Star team, Franz Wagner got a max deal and Jalen Suggs might be the best defensive guard in the league. As you might surmise from that list of early career accolades, the Orlando Magic’s young trio has also done a lot more winning than those on either the Pistons or Spurs.
Orlando logged 47 victories a year ago and had a real shot to knock off a beleaguered Cleveland Cavaliers squad in the first round of the playoffs. Now, with a full year of experience for 2023 first-rounders Black and Howard, the Magic should get even more production from their 24-and-under cohort.
This group is good right now and still has a whole bunch of upside ahead.
It’s not a perfectly balanced core, but the outlines of one exist. Banchero is the lead offensive option, capable of overpowering wings and blowing past defenders with enough size to match his forceful style. A moderate uptick from last year’s 33.9 percent from deep would make Banchero a complete three-level threat whose scoring should get an additional boost as he learns to leverage his strength as a foul-drawer.
Shooting is the real concern here, as Suggs’ growth in that area last year was almost as surprising as Wagner’s regression. If those two level out at matching figures somewhere around 37.0 or 38.0 percent from deep going forward, Orlando will be able to pair serviceable offense with what was the No. 2 defense in the league a year ago.
Black and Howard are question marks, Da Silva is an older rookie who can stripe it but might not have much upside and Anthony seems to have settled in as a solid reserve.
2. Houston Rockets
The volume of talent in Detroit meets the high-end production of the Magic here, as the Houston Rockets boast a trove of young prospects with already strong resumés and immense potential for growth.
Şengün is the most proven of Houston’s youth movement. He put up 21.1 points, 9.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists last year while functioning as an offensive hub from the center spot. His punishing post game and slick passing make him one of the toughest covers in the league, and any gains in three-point shooting down the road will probably produce some All-NBA nod
Green arrived in the same 2021 draft class as Şengün and has struggled to produce consistently. But there’s no denying his scoring upside and athleticism, which have so far tended to peak during late-season surges. Despite the ups and downs, Green still possesses offensive superstar upsid
Thompson is a fascinating piece, capable of dominating games defensively, scoring in bunches around the basket and facilitating. Billed as a point guard in the draft, he essentially played center down the stretch of 2023-24. That’s serious range for one of the league’s best athlete
Smith’s sweet stroke and defensive versatility pair perfectly with every other Rockets prospect, and it often feels like he gets overlooked due to his plug-and-play game. Don’t be fooled; Smith can stretch the floor as a switchable center, spot up from deep and even get into his mid-range bag against smaller matchup
Sheppard might be good enough to displace veteran Fred VanVleet as a rookie, Eason is an uncommonly disruptive defensive forward and Whitmore was a top-five draftee in terms of pure scoring talent who slipped to 20t
If there’s a knock here, it’s that Houston actually has too many prospects. Şengün and Green are extension-eligible, and the payday decisions will keep coming as each of the Rockets’ youngsters prove themselves over the next few seasons. At some point, Houston may have to trim down the field with a consolidation trad
1. Oklahoma City Thunder
It was brutal to decide between the lower ages and higher numbers of the Rockets’ core and the slightly more advanced, comparably thinner group of the Oklahoma City Thunder. For that matter, it’s fair for critics to argue that the OKC pieces listed here haven’t even been as responsible for producing team success as the ones in Orlando.
The Magic were good last year mainly because of what Banchero, Wagner and Suggs accomplished. The Thunder got major contributions from Williams and Holmgren, but they didn’t lead the way themselves. MVP runner-up Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had a major hand in those 57 wins.
If we toggled the sliders a little to include 25-year-olds, OKC could add Lu Dort and Isaiah Joe to the mix. And it’s not like SGA is ancient either, with his 26th birthday just having passed in July.
This ranking comes down to faith in Williams and Holmgren establishing themselves as All-Stars this season. The former was one of just three players to average at least 19.0 points, 4.0 assists and 4.0 rebounds while hitting over 42.0 percent of his threes last season, and the latter is a floor-stretching big with an off-the-dribble game who also averaged 2.3 blocks per game.
Just a personal opinion, but i’m still convinced Williams and Holmgren can both be better in their primes than Banchero in Orlando and Şengün in Houston.
And it’s not hard to imagine either of them being viewed as no-questions-asked cornerstones if they were on any other team right now. It’s not their fault they happen to play with an in-prime superstar in SGA.
Wallace is more than an afterthought. He was in the rotation for the West’s top seed last year as a rookie, hitting 41.9 percent of his threes and defending at an elite level. OKC could trade him for two first-rounders tomorrow if it wanted to. Dieng’s future is uncertain, but it seems unwise to doubt the Thunder’s draft wisdom. Just 21, he could still develop into a two-way combo forward if he ever gets the opportunity on a squad this stacked.
It’s agonizingly close, but Williams, Holmgren and Wallace headline an OKC core that has enjoyed more present success and possesses greater future upside than any other.