For some teams in the playoffs, it's win or go home. For others, it's win or go home, hang out in the basement for a few years and rebuild your way back to title contention.
We're talking about championship windows. Every organization operates in a balancing act between short-term success and long-term viability. With aging rosters and little wiggle room on the cap, the time to go all-in might be now for certain teams, while other younger cores are just getting started.
To measure age, we've calculated the average age of this season's roster with a weighting for minutes played. That way such benchwarmers as Juwan Howard and JaJuan Johnson don't skew the team's figure in either direction. So which teams are treating this run as their last hurrah? Which squads are ripening as we speak? Let's break down the championship windows for the contenders.
Open just a crack
Minutes-adjusted age: 29.3 (third-oldest) | Cap situation: End of an era