Monday’s report stating that Nikola Jokic will win this season’s Most Valuable Player award means that Sixers center Joel Embiid will likely finish as the runner-up in MVP voting for a second straight year. It also means there’s a real chance Embiid could end up on the All-NBA Second Team for a second consecutive year, despite ostensibly being the league’s second-most valuable player.
Unlike the NBA’s All-Star teams, which call for two guards and three frontcourt players, or its All-Rookie teams, which are positionless, the All-NBA squads require voters to select two guards, two forwards, and one center. This means that only one of Jokic or Embiid is in position to make the All-NBA First Team, since both are centers.
This season, the league made Jokic and Embiid eligible at forward as well as center, despite the fact that no reasonable NBA fan could argue that either player spent any real time at power forward this season. The decision is a concession to voters who feel that both players must be on the All-NBA First Team, allowing those voters to essentially disregard positions by listing one of Jokic or Embiid at forward instead of center.
However, it’s a half-measure and one that will likely result in some messy voting results, since a player’s position for All-NBA purposes is the one where he receives the most votes. For instance, let’s say Jokic receives 80 First Team votes (60 as a center and 20 as a forward) and 20 Second Team (as a center) votes, while Embiid receives 60 First Team votes (40 as a center and 20 as a forward) and 40 Second Team votes (as a center).
In that scenario, the result would be the same as last year’s: Jokic would be the All-NBA First Team center, while Embiid would be the Second Team center, even if he has more points than one of the top two forwards, since 80 of his 100 votes came at center, not forward.
In order to have a shot at making the First Team as a forward, Embiid would need over half his voters to list him at forward. And in order for that to happen, at least half of the 100 voters would have to be willing to essentially disregard positions and would have to decide as a group which of the two star centers they’ll list as a forward.
In the grand scheme of things, a spot on the All-NBA Second Team vs. First Team isn’t a big deal, but it’s something we’ll look at down the road when comparing players’ career résumés. The league was willing to make a change to its All-Star voting to reduce the likelihood of an undeserving player making the cut or a deserving player missing out — should it do the same for its All-NBA vote?
We want to know what you think. Are you in favor of keeping the system the way it is, taking the All-Star approach (three frontcourt players instead of two forwards and a center), or removing positions from the equations entirely and asking voters to just select the season’s top 15 players?
If you had a ballot this year, would you have listed one of Jokic or Embiid at forward, or do you like the idea of sticking to the proper positions and putting one of them on the Second Team?
Head to the comment section below to weigh in with your thoughts!
Let’s them put Embiid, Joker, and Giannis on the same 1st team, should be Curry and LBJ too.
Why not just make it easy and have it the same as all star voting. 2 backcourt and 3 front court…
If they can change the rules for one thing why not do it for the other
I think the teams should look as follows:
1st
Curry Morant Giannas Embiid Jokic
2nd
Trae Doncic DeRozan LBJ Gobert
3rd
CP3 Harden Tatum KD Bam
Ja on 1st team? That’s ridiculous
Why he was a MVP contender?
Helped lead the Grizzlies to the second seed in the west with the second best record in the entire league. A team with no other all stars which last season was the 8th seed with 38 wins…
You must be unaware of Memphis’ numbers when Ja isn’t on the court… fully healthy Warriors didn’t have a lead in game 4 until there was less than a minute left in regulation. Thoughts on that?
Yep LBJ gonna steal Embiids spot on the first team.
No Booker?
Booker close but not enough, wouldn’t care if you had him over Harden
Changing the rules after 75 years for Embiid? Really? In the 60’s one year Russell had to be second team and the next it had to be Wilt. And no debate. And the 90’s, when Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing and Shaq were in their primes, one of them had to be left out of any of the three teams. And the rules stayed the same
Just pick the best five and put them on a team. A team with the five Phillyballers mentioned would beat any combination of five other players, would it not? That should be the test to prove the “best five” rule works.
They should just do away with positions all together for All-NBA teams as positions don’t really matter anymore. Jokic is a Point Center, Embiid is Shooting Center, LeBron is a Point Power Small Wing Center and Giannis is a Freak etc…
5 best players on the first team, 6-10 on the 2nd and 11-15 on the 3rd.
I don’t recall using such honors to compare players— prefer formula stats like PER, RTg, BPM.
Theses honors are all so winner-take-all. Starting to feel Embiid’s pain!
All NBA is just an end of season all-star team, with only 15 guys (vs 24-28). It’s determined by outsiders (media). In short, it’s not (or shouldn’t be) that important.
The one caveat is that for some inexplicable reason it’s used to determine eligibility for “super max” extensions and the like. For that purpose, it doesn’t matter which team a guy a makes. Still, in theory, a C could be the 4th best player in the league, but only the 4th best C, and he’d be ineligible for it.
Five best should be in the team… I mean right now you probably could have at least 5 centers in the 3 All-NBA teams… such a great era for centers, some of the best ever!