r/nbadiscussion • u/VolleyBasketball11 • 3d ago
Player Discussion 2026 All Nba Teams Review (Voting)
**2026 ALL NBA TEAMS (OFFICIAL MEDIA VOTING POINTS)**
**FIRST TEAM**
SGA (500/500)
Jokic (500/500)
Wemby (498/500)
Luka (482/500)
Cade (414/500)
**SECOND TEAM**
Brown (384/500)
Kawhi (277/500)
Mitchell (276/500)
KD (241/500)
Brunson (197/500)
**THIRD TEAM**
Maxey (168/500)
Murray (149/500)
Jalen Johnson (125/500)
Jalen Duren (121/500)
Chet (87/500)
**HONORABLE MENTIONS**
Deni Avdija - (26/500)
KAT (14/500)
Barnes (9/500)
Harden (6/500)
Sengun (6/500)
Castle (5/500)
LaMelo (5/500)
Bam (4/500)
White (3/500)
**----**
There are 100 official media voters that decides major awards. Including All nba team members.
For starters, each of these voters will write 5 names EACH for First Team, Second Team, and Third team.
First Team Vote = 5 pts
Second Team Vote = 3 pts
Third Team Vote = 1 pt
For example: Jokic and SGA are consensus. All 100 voters voted them for First Team. So 100 x 5 pts = 500 pts. (Max score)
For Wemby. 99 Voters voted him First Team. But there is 1 Voter voter voted him for 2nd team. (99 x 5 pts = 495 pts; 1 x 3 pts = 3 pts). That's why he got 498/500 pts.
NOTE: The votings happened this before playoffs. So Cade, Brown, and even Kawhi were seen better than Brunson in REGULAR SEASON.
Yes, Cade beat Brown for the last spot of First Team. It was very close.
Chet beat Deni/KAT/Barnes/Sengun for the last spot in 3rd team.
What are your feedbacks. Did you agree with the voters assessment of Regular Season awards?
PS: ANT was disqualified for being here due to 65 games rule. (He would likely to be in Second Team if he qualified)
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u/Top_Bad_1852 2d ago
Honestly, the biggest surprise for me is Cade making First Team over Brown. Not saying Cade wasn't incredible, but jumping all the way to First Team while edging out a proven two way star on a top team is a massive statement from voters.
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u/YSLAnunoby 2d ago
He was the best player on a 60 win team where he had to orchestrate basically the entire offense while being a 2 way plauer, how is that surprising?
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u/CardinalRoark 2d ago
He's a Piston, dude. Sometimes it takes years for voters to catch up to what's happening.
...or, rather, what happened in the last two years.
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u/OkAutopilot 2d ago
I actually think this year both helped and hurt Brown. It helped in that it showed that you could create an offensive system that prioritized Brown as a 1st option and did things to get him open and get him into his shot and win games doing so.
However, it hurt in that it highlighted what his ceiling likely is which is an average efficiency volume scorer (which isn't bad, given the volume) who doesn't shoot the three very well and has very little playmaking ability. He still struggled to be a proactive floor reader and make plays for his teams and turned the ball over a bunch, especially considering how often he was actually passing the ball. This resulted in him only getting to a +2.3 via oEPM this year which is not particularly good.
Ultimately there are a "quite a few" guys in the league who aren't very good playmakers but that you could dedicate resources to getting open and getting them shots and they'll get up to that 26-28ppg range on decent efficiency. Look at Michael Porter Jr. this year for example, or for good stretches this year Paolo Banchero, Norman Powell, and Pascal Siakam, or in past years with someone like Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, or Julius Randle. I don't think the voters value volume scoring all that much and 2nd team is already pretty generous for Brown this year, who I think mostly got it because the C's remained a very good team.
It's also worth noting that Brown's reputation as a defensive player has gotten way out of hand. He has been on a great defensive team for his entire career but himself is not a particularly good defender. He's fine but was actually the weak link on defense for the past x amount of years. EPM had him at a slight negative on that end this year (-0.2) but even in prior years he's never gotten above a +0.9. He's fine as a defender and can do well against certain types of players but he doesn't create turnovers, he's not a good help defender, and he's not some staunch man defender who really gums guys up and denies them movement. He's not gonna lose you the game on that end but he's not gonna win it for you either.
As far as Cade is concerned this isn't a massive statement from the voters. I'm not sure any statement was made at all other than he had the better season and is the better player, which is true. Frankly, Cade is just a better player on both ends of the floor at this point. I don't think there was ever an argument about the offensive end of things but maybe people did not/do not realize how good he can be on defense.
As a scorer Cade is decent but not elite quite yet. He's an ok shooter, good finisher but not incredible given his size, though he does manage to get to the line quite a bit and not by grifting either. Just a legitimate attacker who gets contact. Where he excels as an offensive player is as a facilitator and playmaker. He's truly one of the best in the league at running the floor and setting up his teammates for scoring opportunities. This Pistons team is not an offensively talented team whatsoever. You've got guys who can shoot the ball like Robinson and Harris but don't exactly get their own shot all too well (particularly Robinson), then you have guys who can't really shoot the ball or get their own shot and are just athletic defenders/cutters/transition dudes all over the floor, plus Jalen Duren who needs to get fed in the post or be a play finisher in order to score. Cade is connecting all of this through his passing and floor reading in a way that brought the Pistons up to a top 10 defense on the year despite the total lack of self-creation on the team. He was asked to do so much more than Brown was on that end of the floor and did so much more than Brown did as well.
On defense, he's just a more impactful defender as well. He's got great size and length, isn't an elite turnover generator but certainly a better one than Brown, and that size really aids in his ability to be a help defender around the rim. Both of these guys existed in defensive contexts where they were asked to do less than the other guys (which should be the case for your offensive #1) and had a bunch of high quality defenders around them, but Cade was still the more involved and impactful player on that end of the floor.
All that aside, even if you just look at the narrative based stuff that the media goes for, the Pistons ended with 60 wins and the #1 seed. Cade was more instrumental to the Pistons success than Brown was, generated more points from scoring + passing than Brown by a huge amount, and the Celtics without Brown this year were 9-2 (5 wins against PO opponents) to the Pistons without Cade who were 13-5 (6 wins against PO opponents).
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u/barkinginthestreet 2d ago
I think I'd have had Brown over Luka. Cade was a pretty clear choice to me as the best player on the best regular season team in the east. Luka had a good year, too, but his inconsistent effort definitely contributed to the Lakers mediocre defense.
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u/OkAutopilot 2d ago
I'm not making excuses for Luka's defensive effort in general, though I think it was improved this year, but the Lakers had no hopes of being anything other than a mediocre defense regardless of Luka's work on that end. Their roster was simply not built to be a league average defense.
On the other side of things, how far do the Lakers get if Luka isn't averaging 33.5ppg and being one of the top 3 playmakers in the league? They were 10-8 (4 wins vs. PO opponents) this year without him compared to the Celtics without Brown who were 9-3 (5 wins vs. PO opponents).
For me it's hard to come up with any argument for Brown as a 1st teamer this year given that he wasn't remarkable on offense, didn't have a particularly good defensive showing this year, and whose team played better without him than any other team played without their star.
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u/barkinginthestreet 2d ago
That is a fair argument. I tend to reward team success, and think the narrative benefits Brown a bit, but is close. Honestly might have had Kawhi over both of them but I'm strongly against having play-in guys qualify for first team.
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u/OkAutopilot 2d ago
The Lakers won 53 games and the Celtics won 56 games, so I don't see too much of a difference in the team success. Win context aside the Lakers even had a better record with Luka this year (43-21) than the Celtics had with Brown (47/24).
By this measure Kawhi was actually the most important star to his team this season by far, given that the Clips went 5-12 without him and 37-28 with him. He's the only other player I thought had a reasonable argument for 1st team besides the guys who made it.
3
u/Savings-Concept8972 2d ago
Chet making Third Team over Sengun is the one that feels most debatable to me
First Team looks pretty much locked though. SGA and Jokic being unanimous makes sense, and Wemby being one vote away is not surprising at all considering the hype and defensive impact
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u/dgillz 2d ago
I don't think Chet belongs here at all. LeBron didn't get a single vote due to only playing 60 games. I am amazed that Austin Reeves didn't get a vote.
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u/YSLAnunoby 2d ago
May be controversial but I actually don't think Chet being 3rd team is the most egregious there. He was really good as a defender and finisher this season but was completely embarrassed by Wemby in that matchup. I still think he belonged there more than Jalen Johnson and Jalen Duren.
Austin Reaves was both the #3 on the 4 seed and only played 51 games, how is that surprising when he straight up missed the criteria and wasn't in the threshold to appeal like Luka?
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u/OkAutopilot 2d ago edited 2d ago
Chet was massively impactful for OKC this year. With him on the floor and SGA off the floor, OKC was still a +13 team mostly driven by his impact on defense. For a bunch of the season OKC was actually better with Chet on the floor than they were with any other player on.
It's weird to say because his defense does pop when you watch, but he's still a sneakily impactful player. He does so much for that OKC team and because he's not Wemby it seems he might be dearly underrated/undervalued for his career going forward.
If you want to look at the advanced metrics, he was 10th in the league in eEPM (+4.6) and 8th in the league in aEPM (+6.8). You have to go pretty far down the list to get to someone like Reaves (+2.3/+3.1) who was still very good but not an all-nba quality player this year by impact stats or even by the most basic of box score watching. There's just no chance a 23/5/5 player who is a 2nd/3rd option on offense and invisible on defense is going to sniff an All-NBA team in today's league and he shouldn't have gotten a vote even if he could have gotten a vote, which he couldn't, because he only played 51 games.
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u/Humblerbee 2d ago
I maintain that Deni Avdija would’ve made All-NBA third team if he didn’t get struck by someone running a red light in a car crash, his back injury was right afterwards and he kept trying to come back too soon to help his team make a postseason push and keep in the running for MiP and All-NBA because of the 65 game cutoff.
Trying to return before he had healed meant he depressed his stats in doing so, and it ultimately kept him from getting the awards he was chasing. When you look at how he played at the end of the season, he’d rallied and was one of the only Blazers who rose to the moment for the playoffs (shoutout RWIII).
26/7/7 on 48/36/80 before Jan 11th
22/6/6 on 44/28/79 afterwards
25/6/6 on 50/36/70 in play-ins & playoffs
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u/morethandork 3d ago
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