Notes From Courtside: Young Teams Are Making Their Mark - FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Notes from a trip to the NBA Playoffs.

Youth has been served in the NBA playoffs this year. You've seen it by Chris Paul schooling Jason Kidd in the West, and you've seen it by the Hawks and Sixers giving the Celtics and Pistons fits in the East. It's not just an anomaly, either; Henry Abbott of TrueHoop checked the numbers and discovered that players 23 years old and younger have accounted for 21% of the minutes played so far, by far the league's highest tally since the late 1970's.

Pistons coach Flip Saunders knows first-hand the danger of a young opponent, as his team had to claw back from behind 1-2 to being ahead 3-2 against the Sixers. Before Game 5 on Tuesday, he talked a little bit about Atlanta's win over the Celtics on Monday and why youth can be such a wild card.

"It proves that your young, athletic teams, on given nights they can get things going, no matter how good you are, they can cause some problems," said Saunders. "I thought Boston played pretty good [Monday]; Atlanta just played exceptional. I'm sure it it shows a little bit of the parity as far as the league, [but] I think more than anything else it shows that when you look at the playoffs, you can't look at teams' records, you have to look at what the matchups are. And certain teams will cause more matchup problems than other teams."

He's exactly right, and part of the problem these young teams pose such a threat is because their best players not only can reach an extra gear but also have a bigger gas tank. Boston's Big 3 of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen are all on the wrong side of 30; the Hawks, meanwhile, evened the series by 26-year-old Joe Johnson and 22-year-old Josh Smith scoring every single one of Atlanta's points in the fourth on Monday. Obviously Johnson and Smith are rarely that dominant at the same time in every game, but when it happens, not even the league's best defense can contain them.

The Pistons, meanwhile, were caught off guard in two of the first three games against the Sixers due to a long, athletic Sixers team that completely knocked many of Detroit's veterans out of rhythm. I don't think it's a coincidence that Detroit's most consistent player on either end of the court has been Tayshaun Prince, the youngest and most athletic of the regular starting five.

The Pistons seem to have reverted back to their regular dominant selves over their last six quarters of basketball, but this is a squad that's been done in the past two years by younger, more athletic contenders, so nothing is etched in stone, no matter how much of an edge in experience they have. If it's any condolence, it's a problem every veteran contender (see: Mavericks, Dallas) has to face.