Average NBA Career Length for Players – Details

Thanks to the lockout you’ve probably read or heard how long average career of NBA player really is, and you can easily google it but… it’s not up-to-date information and there are very few details about it…

For example, how average NBA career length has changed through league’s history?
Is it so much longer now than it used to be? How exactly is it calculated?
How does this average career span differs for NBA starters and deep reserves?

I’ll answer those and many more questions in this post… but let’s start with the description. I collected data from basketball-reference.com for every season from 1946-47 to 2010-11, then I removed multiple occurrences in one season [usually due to trades] and finally counted how many times player appeared on the list.
Simple, right? Such sequence gave me an average NBA career length of 4.869 seasons for 3668 players.

But you’ve already knew that so let’s begin the fun part…

Here’s an average for all players who finished their career in any given year.

Season Ended In	Average Career Length	For So Many Players	The Only Year	Number of Teams		Season Ended In	Average Career Length	For So Many Players	The Only Year	Number of Teams
1947	1.000	87	87	11		1979	4.553	47	10	22
1948	1.548	31	14	8		1980	4.323	62	18	22
1949	1.653	72	41	12		1981	3.855	55	26	23
1950	1.657	102	62	17		1982	4.525	59	13	23
1951	2.558	52	10	11		1983	5.000	59	15	23
1952	2.412	34	12	10		1984	5.041	49	11	23
1953	2.580	50	21	10		1985	4.978	45	11	23
1954	2.553	38	19	9		1986	5.203	59	15	23
1955	2.905	42	19	8		1987	4.691	55	16	23
1956	3.706	17	8	8		1988	4.679	56	17	23
1957	3.375	24	7	8		1989	4.315	54	21	25
1958	3.917	36	12	8		1990	4.783	60	20	27
1959	3.786	14	5	8		1991	6.241	54	9	27
1960	5.136	22	4	8		1992	5.636	55	12	27
1961	4.167	12	2	8		1993	5.328	61	12	27
1962	3.324	37	20	9		1994	4.852	61	17	27
1963	2.724	29	13	9		1995	6.051	59	12	27
1964	5.227	22	7	9		1996	4.649	57	19	29
1965	3.682	22	6	9		1997	5.658	73	15	29
1966	5.130	23	6	9		1998	5.790	62	12	29
1967	3.462	13	4	10		1999	5.887	71	16	29
1968	2.261	23	14	12		2000	6.696	69	12	29
1969	3.833	30	12	14		2001	7.75	72	13	29
1970	4.864	22	6	14		2002	7.900	60	8	29
1971	3.511	47	23	17		2003	6.403	67	14	29
1972	3.457	46	15	17		2004	7.474	57	8	29
1973	5.029	34	11	17		2005	6.629	89	14	30
1974	4.553	38	13	17		2006	5.500	72	20	30
1975	4.913	46	13	18		2007	5.197	71	20	30
1976	5.732	56	12	18		2008	6.985	67	12	30
1977	4.419	62	23	22		2009	6.057	70	9	30
1978	4.055	55	13	22		2010	6.070	71	10	30

… and as a graph…

So it is longer than it used to be… but the biggest rises occurred around the time when expansions happened so that’s probably just an effect of creating more jobs in the NBA.

Now that we have such basic information covered let’s dig in a bit deeper…

Here’s a historical distribution of career lengths [for those which ended before last season]…

Career Length in Seasons	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Number of such Careers	991	501	299	217	152	127	124	113	113	135	115

Career Length in Seasons	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22+
Number of such Careers	92	87	56	40	20	15	9	5	1	2	0

Outliers are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Parish and Kevin Willis ;-)

Here’s a similar breakdown for those who played last season [obviously most of them can become longer]…

Career Length in Seasons	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Number of such Careers	67	49	50	38	32	37	34	38	20	21	17

Career Length in Seasons	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22+
Number of such Careers	14	14	3	9	6	2	0	1	0	0	0

Outliers are Kidd, Juwan Howard and Shaq ;-)

Speaking of old players… here’s an average age of players who have just finished their careers in the NBA…

… and average age of those players who have just started…

Keep in mind that before 1976-77 season NBA added 4 new teams to the league and there were some 30 years old rookies… Also we can easily see the effect of recent draft age limit.

That was fun… but all above graphs and calculations counted every player equally…
even if he only got a try-out at the end of season and failed. Shouldn’t he be happy that he got a chance?
Should we even count that as a “career” or was it more a chance at one?

Well, let’s tweak the question a little bit…

What’s the average career length for NBA Players in various rotation roles?

Minimum of 41 games played in a career = 6.18 seasons.

Less than 12 minutes per game for a career = 2.01 seasons.
More than 12 minutes per game for a career but less than 20 = 5.01 seasons.
More than 20 minutes per game for a career but less than 25 = 7.59 seasons.
More than 25 minutes per game for a career but less than 30 = 9.21 seasons.
More than 30 minutes per game for a career = 10.88 seasons.
NBA All-Star at least once = 11.36 seasons.

So yeah, it’s not an one-dimensional question and it really depends on how good a player is perceived to be ;-)

BTW, dimension also matters… average careers for players with…
Height of 7 feet or more = 5.78 seasons.
Height from 6-7 to 6-11 = 5.43 seasons.
Height from 6-3 to 6-6 = 4.51 seasons.
Height 6-2 or below = 4.12 seasons.

P.S. If you are interested in an average career length for NBA Coaches and GMs click on the link ;-)