In the 2000-01 season, the average NBA team attempted 13.7 3-pointers per game. In the 2024-25 campaign, that figure jumped to 37.6. No center averaged even four assists 25 years ago. Nikola Jokić just reached double digits. Hand-checking was allowed and zone defense was not. That has since flipped. Only one international player won an MVP award in the 20th century. We’re now in the middle of a seven-year streak of only having international MVPs. We have an In-Season Tournament. We have a Play-In Tournament. That’s two more tournaments than we had at the turn of the century.
All of this is to say, basketball is an ever-evolving sport. The sport we had 25 years ago is very different than the one we have now. And that is inevitably going to be true moving forward. The NBA in 2050 won’t necessarily look all that much like the NBA in 2025. The sport is going to change. The way we talk about it is going to change.
So, as we put a bow on our run of Quarter Century content, we’re going to try to figure out what sort of changes are coming. Below, the CBS Sports NBA staff each made one bold prediction about the NBA in 2050.
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Victor Wembanyama will be considered the greatest player in NBA history
We’ve never had a player with Victor Wembanyama’s combination of physical traits and developed skills. How many 7-foot-3 centers have ever been able to put the ball on the deck on offense and switch onto the perimeter defensively? Or block five shots and make five 3s in a single game? Michael Jordan and LeBron James towered over their eras figuratively. Wembanyama will do so literally. Whereas they were the best versions of player archetypes we’d seen before, Wembanyama is the next stage in the sport’s evolution, a player we’ve never seen before and one we may need decades to see again. He’s going to win practically every Defensive Player of the Year trophy he’s eligible to win. His Spurs are as well-positioned to contend for the long haul in the apron era as any team in the league. He still has some rough edges to sand out of his game, and his teammates are young and still learning as well, but once he starts racking up trophies in the next year or two, he won’t stop until he’s amassed a greater collection of them than any player in the history of the sport. — Sam Quinn
Philly’s basketball title drought ends… but not the 76ers’
By 2050, Philadelphia’s long title drought will be over and the city will finally have another professional basketball championship — courtesy of the forthcoming WNBA team. The 76ers haven’t won a championship since 1983, and they haven’t been to the conference finals since 2001. Philly’s WNBA team will deliver in its first two decades. — John Gonzalez
A big name will be part of gambling scandal
By 2050, the NBA will have to distance itself from sports betting after a massive scandal involving a high-profile NBA player. The number of sports betting scandals that have happened in the NBA just in the last year alone have been eyebrow-raising. It feels like we’re headed down a path where eventually a more notable star is going to get caught up in this. — Jasmyn Wimbish
Curry’s 2015-16 season will reign supreme
In 2050, Stephen Curry’s 2015-16 season will still be the single greatest campaign anyone has ever seen. Curry averaged 30.1 points, 6.7 assists, 2.1 steals, made five 3s per game and had shooting splits of 50.4/45.4/90.8 as he unanimously won MVP honors in 2016 on a 73-9 team. Curry has changed the game, but no player will be able to duplicate or surpass that season in the next 25 years. — Brad Botkin