For one night last month, Tyrese Haliburton had the whole basketball world in his hands.
In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Knicks, he helped lead the Indiana Pacers to a historic comeback, erasing a 14-point deficit in less than three minutes. In the final seconds of regulation, with his team down two, he drove into the lane before making a U-turn and firing up what appeared to be a game-winning 3 that bounced high off the back rim and dropped straight through the net. Considering the bounce, the stakes, and the frenzied run that preceded it, Haliburton’s shot instantly became one of the most iconic buzzer-beaters in recent NBA history, and he followed it up with an homage to the famous choking celebration Reggie Miller used after a Pacers playoff win over the Knicks in 1994.
Of course, the replay revealed that Haliburton’s foot was on the 3-point line. His shot was changed to a 2-pointer, and the game went into overtime, where the Pacers were able to close out a 138-135 win. The entire night belonged to Haliburton—and when he took to the podium after the game, he had one more memorable moment up his sleeve.
“I might’ve wasted it,” Haliburton said of the celebration, which he said he wouldn’t have done had he known his foot was on the line. “If I do it again, people might say I’m aura farming,” he continued.
If the NBA’s gradual generational shift has been a defining trend of the 2020s, then Haliburton’s postgame presser may have marked the tipping point. Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant were all weeks into their offseasons when Haliburton authored the defining moment of the 2025 playoffs—and punctuated it with, as many older members of the NBA ecosystem would soon learn via frantic Google searching, Gen Z slang for, essentially, “trying too hard to be cool.”
Welcome to the Gen Z playoffs, where Haliburton is just one of many young stars taking over the league. On Thursday night, in the NBA Finals, he’ll face off against 26-year-old Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a fellow zoomer who led the Thunder to the best regular-season record in the NBA and just won Most Valuable Player. As Tom Haberstroh wrote last week, the series between the Pacers and Thunder will deliver the first zoomer champion in league history: Either OKC, with an average weighted age of 24.7 years, or Indiana, with an average of 26.2, will put Gen Z on the mountaintop.
Of course, demographic transitions like this are par for the course in the NBA. In the ’70s, Wilt, Russell, Cousy, and Kareem gave way to Magic, Bird, and Dr. J. After dominating the ’80s, that trio passed the baton to Jordan, Barkley, and Hakeem. Shaq, Kobe, and Duncan dominated the 2000s before LeBron, Durant, and Curry took the mantle that is now being passed to a new group of young superstars.
But the current transformation also carries several distinctions from its predecessors. As the first generation to grow up in the age of the internet and social media, Gen Z stars bring a new-age sensibility to the NBA—one that many people around the league are still adjusting to, from coaches to advertisers to those of us who cover the game.
David Brickley is the CEO of STN Digital, a social media marketing agency that works with several NBA players and teams, including the Pacers. He says that growing up during the 21st century has had a profound effect on the way Gen Z players relate to fans, critics, and the narratives surrounding the game. “[Haliburton] grew up on social like everybody in Gen Z did,” Brickley says. “So he’s very, very attuned and very aware of what’s corny or what’s cool or what the trend is or what people are saying about him, about the league, about sports.”
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David Aldridge, a reporter for The Athletic who has covered the NBA for three decades, characterizes this generation in similar terms. He says young players now are more self-aware than the ones he covered in the ’90s. “They’re more in control of their own narrative, which I think is overwhelmingly a good thing.”
This is partly because Gen Z players have spent their entire professional lives navigating a culture in which the distance between players and their fans has drastically collapsed. In previous decades, the primary avenues for players like Jordan and Bird to connect with NBA consumers were through commercials and print media, as well as signing a few autographs. Now, cultivating those relationships requires more direct engagement. “What we recommend for all athletes is spending time with your fans,” Brickley tells me—even if spending time with fans might mean something very different than it used to. “That one like, that one heart, that one comment can literally buy you a lifetime of fandom.”
That “connectivity” with fans, as Brickley calls it, can be good and bad. On the one hand, it opens players up to a world of toxicity that players in previous generations didn’t have to deal with. “You had talk radio and the local paper that might criticize you,” says Steve Kerr, whose NBA playing career lasted from 1987 to 2003. “But George from Richmond couldn't email you or put something on social media that gets in your hands at halftime, calling you a bum.” He says the Warriors work with their players to navigate this dynamic and the toll it can take on their mental health.
On the other hand, fans have a more streamlined window into a player’s life and personality, which can build lasting connections. The influx of Gen Z stars can make the NBA more accessible to young fans and serve as an on-ramp for people who want to be more involved in the game. “It’s just relatable,” says Jesse Riedel, a prominent basketball streamer better known as Jesser. He says that, like most fans, Gen Z hoops heads connect primarily to players’ skills and styles on the court, but their perception of those players is augmented by a generational connection, something Haliburton is particularly adept at harnessing farming. “It makes the superstar relatable that they talk like a normal person their age would talk.”
Brickley says the key to connecting with young fans is authenticity. “I think people are always trying to ascertain, ‘Was this real? Was this authentic, or is this staged?’ And I think the social user is savvy enough now [to know].”
Authenticity means different things for different players. Riedel points to the time when Haliburton tweeted, “When you ain’t do nun on the group project and still get an A,” following Team USA’s gold medal win, as a moment that endeared him to younger fans. Or when Anthony Edwards took a victory lap around Crypto.com Arena to sing the praises of the movie Matilda after banishing Luka Doncic and LeBron. Or when Shai posts a carousel of photos on his Instagram feed, accentuating his aura for the masses and cultivating a social presence that online fans can gravitate toward.
The NBA’s generational shift is also being felt inside locker rooms. Kerr is careful to note that information overload impacts people of all ages— “I’ve been doing yoga for 20 years,” he rants. “The first 15 years of my yoga experience were silent, and in the last five years, every yoga instructor has a playlist”—but he has had to adapt his coaching style to connect with younger players who have lived their whole lives in the smartphone era. “I do have to be more patient,” he says. “I have to spend a little more time explaining concepts when they're drawing up a play, making sure we have to draw it up a second time.”
If there’s one team that epitomizes the shift underway in the NBA, it’s the Oklahoma City Thunder. The team's three best players are all members of Gen Z; in addition to SGA, who’s 26, OKC has Jalen Williams (24) and Chet Holmgren (23). The oldest players in the regular rotation are Alex Caruso (31) and Isaiah Hartenstein (27). Riedel says the Thunder’s youth has helped them resonate with many younger fans. “Winning definitely contributes,” he says, “but I feel like the characters on the team, it’s a very young team. ... The younger the roster, the more the players talk like young people, the more relatable they are.”
And if the NBA is becoming a young man’s game, then covering it as a young person also has its advantages. Joel Lorenzi, a 26-year-old beat writer covering the Thunder for The Oklahoman, can speak to some of them. When reached by phone last month, he shared how he thinks OKC’s youth has impacted fans’ perception of them and how his age provides a unique lens through which to cover the team.
“I mean, it is very much this generation,” Lorenzi says. “And with this team specifically, they are so chronically online, they’re very aware of the memes about them.
“If there’s a poster boy or poster child for aura farming,” he continues, “this team is probably it.”
In an ecosystem where media access is tightening and where public figures often go to nontraditional outlets, covering a sports beat requires finding innovative ways to connect with players. Lorenzi leverages the terminology and generational touchstones that he shares with the Thunder players to help him cover the team. He even follows many of their “finstas” to get a better idea of what’s going on in their minds and what interests and cultural references they have outside of basketball.
“It is pretty intimate to them, and I think older writers just wouldn’t know about that,” Lorenzi says. “I mean, you look at these [posts], they’re putting a Bible verse, weird selfies, and it’s giving a part of themselves that everybody can’t get, and it gives you stuff to ask them about and pick their interests.”
When David Aldridge was a young Bullets beat reporter for The Washington Post in the early ’90s, the players were similarly his peers. He’d frequently talk shop with Bullets players, discussing the latest trends in music, sports, and politics. “I went into their locker room after a practice, and somebody was playing Michael Jackson’s ‘Remember the Time,’” he tells me. “And just thinking you are on the cutting edge. You’re the same age as the players, and you are young, and you go to the same spots. You watch the same shows, you have the same slang, you feel great, you feel invincible, but that changes.”
Thirty years later, Aldridge occupies a different role in the NBA media landscape. “It’s way different than when I was just getting started,” Aldridge admits. He did not know what “aura farming” was until Haliburton said it during the conference finals.
Aldridge has had a brilliant career, including stops at ESPN, Turner Sports, and now The Athletic. In 2016, he received the Curt Gowdy lifetime achievement award from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. But these days, no matter where he goes, he’s defined by a different accomplishment.
“Now I’m just the dude from 2K,” Aldridge quips. “That’s all I am.”
Aldridge’s journey with the NBA 2K franchise began in 2016 through his work with Turner. One morning, Aldridge was preparing in the studio with Kevin Harlan, who was already a play-by-play announcer for the game and knew that the 2K executives were looking to fill a sideline reporter role. He made the referral. “Kevin Harlan is the reason my children are going to college,” Aldridge deadpans. “And I wish I were kidding, but I am not kidding.”
The distinction has its perks. During last year’s predraft camp in Chicago, prospects came up to Aldridge to ask for pictures. “It does give you a certain entry point and cachet with young people,” he says. “And that’s OK. I don’t mind that at all.”
Aldridge talks about the incoming generation with a positive acceptance of the passage of time. He’s here to cover the game and its players, but he’s not going to try to be something he’s not. “The things that young people are concerned about are probably not the things that I’m concerned about,” he says.
Aldridge has covered basketball longer than many of today’s players have been alive. And he has a lot of respect for the way today’s Gen Z stars are blazing their own trails through the league. Like many of the OGs before him, Aldridge knows that Haliburton, SGA, and reporters like Lorenzi will one day be in his shoes.
“You can’t fight time,” he says. “Time always wins.”
