In February 2018, my colleague Danny Chau embarked on a quixotic mission to predict the 2023 NBA All-Stars half a decade in advance. The concept was, he wrote, “a simple question with an impossible answer: Who will be All-Stars five years from now?”
Well, 2023’s All-Star Weekend is here, so we can assess Danny’s forecast: 10 of his 24 picks were accurate, and many more were close, injury-related misses.
It’s hard to blame Danny for many of his oversights. Five years ago, Tyrese Haliburton was a three-star commit to Iowa State. Ja Morant was a freshman at Murray State, after not even being ranked as a recruit. Bam Adebayo and Domantas Sabonis were both late lottery picks who mostly came off the bench. There was no feasible way to predict that any of them would be All-Stars five years later.
But now that the initial project has come to fruition, it’s time to try again, asking our own simple question with an impossible answer: Who will be All-Stars five years from now, in 2028?
Here are the ground rules. First, only 35 percent of All-Stars this century were also All-Stars exactly five years earlier, so fewer than half of our selections can come from the 2023 All-Star rosters. It wouldn’t be any fun (or accurate) to just say everyone from this year’s game will repeat in 2028.
Second, I’m going to abide by the average age distribution of All-Stars this century, which means the 2028 All-Star Game rosters will feature:
- Six players who are currently in their teens.
- Twelve players (half the selection) who are currently in the 20-24 age range.
- Five players who are 25-29.
- Just one player who is in his 30s.
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Note that this distribution reflects a slight shift from Danny’s exercise five years ago, when five players (versus six now) were in the youngest age bucket, while six (versus five now) were in their late 20s. Broadly speaking, All-Stars are getting younger; over the past five seasons, 30 percent of All-Stars have been under the age of 25, the highest proportion for any five-season span this century.
And finally, I’m going to ignore any team, conference, or position affiliations because so much can change on those fronts between now and 2028. In that same vein, I’m also limiting myself to 24 picks—even though I hope the rosters expand to 15 players apiece, for 30 total players, at some point soon.
The Teen Selections
Choosing the teen representatives might be the hardest part of this project. I’m not a draft analyst, so I’ve never seen many of the best candidates in this age bracket play. Only 14 NBA players this season are in their teens, and all 14 rate as below-average players as rookies, per box plus-minus. (Note: All ages in this piece refer to a player’s “season” age, which Basketball Reference defines as a player’s age on February 1.)
At least there are two generational prospects in the 2023 draft. Wembanyama is the best prospect since LeBron, as he leads the top-flight French league in points (22.2 per game), rebounds (9.5), and blocks (3.1) at the ripe old age of 19. Henderson is a powerful guard who might have been the no. 1 prospect in most other draft classes. They make for an easy first two selections.
Next up is Boozer, the son of two-time All-Star Carlos and the youngest pick here; he won’t even graduate from high school until 2025. Yet making an All-Star team at age 20 has precedent, especially recently—out of 11 players in NBA history to make an All-Star team at that age or younger, three have come in the 2020s (LaMelo Ball, Zion Williamson, and Luka Doncic). Prospect analysts say he’s already a complete player with a well-rounded skill set, on both offense and defense, as a high school sophomore. When I asked Ringer youth expert J. Kyle Mann which far-off prospect should be on this list, he chose Boozer and declared the young forward a “no-brainer prediction.”
Boozer is the no. 1 prospect in ESPN’s prospect class of 2025, but that’s no guarantee of future stardom, so I can’t just pick the no. 1 guys from 2023 and 2024 and comfortably move on. From 2016 through 2019, ESPN’s no. 1 recruits were Harry Giles, Marvin Bagley Jr., RJ Barrett, and James Wiseman; at this point, only Barrett seems to have a remote chance of ever making an All-Star team. A better choice instead would be the Haliburton or Morant who’s floating far down the recruiting ranks, but I’d be throwing darts blindfolded if I attempted to actually identify that breakout now.
Unless that breakout happened to be the son of the greatest basketball player of the 21st century. A month ago, I wouldn’t have considered picking James, a four-star prospect who’s about the 30th-best recruit in the high school class of 2023. (ESPN ranks him 28th, 247Sports 34th.) But the expert perception of his NBA outlook appears to be changing. The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie recently wrote that Bronny “has a terrific blend of athleticism, feel for the game, shooting and defensive play” and is “actually a bit underrated as a recruit.” ESPN’s Jonathan Givony was even more laudatory, calling the younger James “one of the best two-way players in high school basketball” and a “potential one-and-done candidate.”
If I have to pick a non-five-star prospect to try to fit the historical pattern, I could do worse than banking on a player with Bronny’s pedigree and popularity—especially for a competition that incorporates a fan vote.
Finally, I looked toward the small group of current NBA teens for the last two picks in this group. Daniels hasn’t produced much as a rookie for the Pelicans, with averages of 4.5 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists per game, but he fits the profile of other players who have made giant leaps in recent years. As a 6-foot-8 point guard with insightful passing vision and impressive defensive chops, Daniels could blossom given opportunity and further development.
Sharpe went one pick before Daniels in the 2022 draft, and the Trail Blazers rookie remains remarkably raw; he’s a terrible defender and has as many turnovers as assists. But my goodness, that offensive ceiling. That athleticism. Those dunks!
The 20-24 Selections
OK, actually, selecting the players in this group made the teen choices seem easy. This is the last bucket I finalized; heck, as I write this sentence, I still might go back to flip a few final picks. (Update: I did!)
Players in this age range are in the sweet spot where they’ve begun to show they belong in the All-Star conversation even as they still have so much potential to improve, as they gain NBA experience and mature into their peak years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jalen Green averaged 30 points per game in 2028, or Cade Cunningham led the league in assists, or Nicolas Claxton won Defensive Player of the Year. There are so many worthwhile candidates in this age range, with so many feasibly spectacular developmental paths, that my 12 backup options could include as many All-Stars as the dozen players I actually selected.
As an overarching philosophy, I leaned toward multifaceted contributors—players who can both score efficiently themselves and create for others. Offense is so advanced in the modern NBA that a player must have both skills to stand out, and 11 of the 12 players here are averaging at least 3.5 assists per game this season. The exception is Mobley, who’s a great passer for his position and the best young defender in the league.
The easiest picks were Doncic, Tatum, and Morant, who are already All-Star staples as three of the best players in the league. But picking every young 2023 All-Star wouldn’t be the right strategy to forecast 2028’s honorees. The two youngest All-Stars in 2018 were Kristaps Porzingis and Karl-Anthony Towns, both 22 at the time, neither of whom made the team this year; ditto Bradley Beal, Anthony Davis, and Andre Drummond, all 24-year-old All-Stars in 2018. Overall, 42 percent of All-Stars in the 20-24 age range this century weren’t All-Stars five years later.
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In narrowing down the long list of candidates—seriously, my preliminary player pool for this project included more than 150 names, and half of them were in this age range—I was forced to pick the tiniest nits. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a revelation, as a defensive ace averaging 31 points per game—but will his production stay at this level into his late 20s without the kind of 3-point ability that other guards in this age range, like Haliburton and Garland, display?
I also used health as a tiebreaker. A number of Danny’s inaccurate predictions for the 2023 rosters faltered on this factor; he picked Michael Porter Jr., Brandon Ingram, Devin Booker, Towns, Davis, and Kawhi Leonard, all of whom would have been All-Star locks or contenders this season if not for too many missed games.
All of which is to say I feel like a real dolt for not picking Zion Williamson—and, to a lesser extent, the likes of Jaren Jackson Jr. (also an All-Star this season), Porter, and Chet Holmgren. Given his immense production and popularity, Zion should be an All-Star every year he’s healthy for the next decade—but it’s impossible to forecast his health five weeks from now, let alone in five years.
The other biggest takeaway from this section is the lack of traditional 6-foot-8 wing options. Where are all the young small forwards? A couple fringe options made my preliminary list, like the Pelicans’ Trey Murphy III and Kings rookie Keegan Murray. But few of my 12 picks fit that description, and my list of runner-ups for this age range mostly consisted of smaller, scoring-oriented guards (such as Trae Young, Tyrese Maxey, Tyler Herro, Anfernee Simons, and Jordan Poole) and non-shooting centers (such as Walker Kessler, Jarrett Allen, and Deandre Ayton).
The 25-29 Selections
I take my previous statement back: This is the hardest set to choose. This age range contains more current All-Stars than any other; of course it’s a headache to try to fathom why they wouldn’t, by the power of inertia alone, still be worthy of the honor in five years.
In Danny’s version of this project in 2018, he called his selections in this age range “playing the hits” because “it’s hard not to envision some of the most influential players of this generation maintaining star power into their mid-30s.” That’s how I feel with Jokic, Giannis, and Embiid, the three titans of the big man revolution, who have between them collected the last four MVP awards and the last two runner-up finishes. (Fun fact: No active player who’s younger than Jokic has ever received a single first-place vote for MVP.)
Because I believe that skilled bigs will continue to rule the league, I wanted to pick another from this prime age range, which led to a decision between Adebayo and Towns. (Davis fell short because of the health factor.) Adebayo’s relative youth and defensive bona fides give me more confidence he’ll remain a viable All-Star in five years’ time, although it’s hard to say no to a center with Towns’s offensive range.
And for the final spot from the 25-29 crowd, pick a guard, any guard: Booker, De’Aaron Fox, Jamal Murray, Jaylen Brown, and Donovan Mitchell all have legitimate arguments. I also could have gone with Mikal Bridges or OG Anunoby, 3-and-D wings with the potential for yet more offensive growth. But Booker is younger than Mitchell and a more well-rounded scorer than Fox, Murray, or Brown, and he has so thoroughly refined his offensive game that I believe the Suns guard will age smoothly into his early 30s.
The 30-Plus Selection
All right, fine, this is the hardest selection of all. Damian Lillard’s been an All-Star in his last five healthy seasons. Curry’s been an All-Star in his last nine healthy seasons. James Harden was an All-Star 10 straight seasons until this year, when he should have made it 11. Kevin Durant’s streak is 13 and counting, aside from the year he missed with a torn Achilles. And LeBron’s streak is 19, with no end in sight. And I’m supposed to pick just one of them?
History says I have to. In 24 seasons this century, only 28 players have been All-Stars at age 35 or older (not counting Dwyane Wade’s and Dirk Nowitzki’s honorary spots in their final seasons). Since 2016, only LeBron and Chris Paul fit those criteria. Time remains undefeated.
Granted, Father Time hasn’t conquered LeBron yet, and I seriously considered picking the NBA’s new all-time leading scorer here. But ultimately, I was forced to conclude that even he will show his age at some point in the next half decade; by 2028, LeBron will be 43 years old, and the oldest All-Star in NBA history was the man LeBron just passed on the career points leaderboard: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an injury replacement at 41.
Curry is four years younger, and the concerns about his health—he hasn’t played 70 games in a season since 2016-17—also apply to every other non-LeBron option in his 30s. I’m fascinated to observe how the greatest shooter in NBA history will age; at 34, he’s still one of the league’s premier lead guards, but what will Steph look like as a role player and spot-up shooter? Ray Allen retired before turning 39, but it seems like Curry will be able to warp defenses and make 40 percent of his 3s until he feels like stopping.
As an additional benefit, Curry is sure to remain popular in whatever incarnation of the fan vote the NBA uses to determine its All-Stars five years hence, so he’s the final pick for this speculative exercise. You can @ me in 2028 when you see how many of the 24 I get wrong.
