All-NBA Team

• 1. Introduction

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  The All-NBA Team has honored LeBron James at the age of 20, and it honored him again at the age of 40. No other player has been picked at both ends of such a span. That one career stretches across two decades of annual selections, and the honor itself has been handed out after every National Basketball Association season since the league's first, in 1946. Each year, a global panel of sportswriters and broadcasters decides which players earned a place among the very best. This documentary asks how those voters turn opinions into lineups, and what happens when the rules for building a lineup get in the way of the best players. It asks why a league would abandon positions, then bring them back, then abandon them again. And it asks who has piled up the longest record of selections.

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• 2. Counting the Votes

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  Five points for a first-team vote, three for a second-team vote and one for a third-team vote: that is the whole arithmetic behind the All-NBA Team. Each panelist fills out a ballot, and the totals sort players into lineups of five.

  For the league's first four decades, there were only two lineups, a first and a second team. A third team arrived in 1988, and three five-man teams have been the format ever since.

  Ties can bend the numbers. In 1952, Bob Davies and Dolph Schayes finished level for a place on the first team. The result was the only time a team has ever held six players, while the second team stayed at five.

  The listings for the 1946-47 season begin with Joe Fulks of the Philadelphia Warriors, a name that would return on the list for a fourth selection.

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• 3. Guards, Forwards and a Center

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  For nine seasons at the start, the voters ignored positions entirely and simply picked the best players. Then came the 1955-56 season, when the league changed course and asked for a defined shape: two guards, two forwards and one center on each team. That shape lasted from 1956 through 2023.

  The ballots carried a short instruction. Voters were told to pick each player at the spot he plays regularly. Some voters stretched that wording and put a player at a position that was not his main job.

  When a player collected votes at more than one position, the league filed him wherever he had received the most. That rule could be harsh. In 2016, Draymond Green drew votes at both forward and center. He was placed on the second team as a forward, even though his points total beat that of DeAndre Jordan, the first-team center.

  The 2020 season produced a similar puzzle. Khris Middleton had votes at forward and guard, yet he missed the third team. Ben Simmons and Russell Westbrook made it as guards with fewer total points than Middleton had collected.

  The All-Star Game starters follow a different split. Since 2013, fans and others choosing them have picked two backcourt players and three frontcourt players.

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• 4. The Positionless Return

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  Late in its 2022 season, the Women's National Basketball Association announced a change to its own All-WNBA Teams. Players would be chosen without regard to position. The NBA, the WNBA's sister league, soon followed.

  The switch took effect with the 2023-24 season, which also marked the start of a new collective bargaining agreement between the league and its players' union. In effect, the NBA returned to the approach it had used before 1955-56.

  Under the new format, the five highest point totals make the first team, regardless of whether they are guards, forwards or centers. The second and third teams are filled in order from there. Players are listed in order of points received, and ties are broken alphabetically by family name.

  The new rules also did away with the old position classification problems. A player like Green or Middleton would no longer be bumped to a lower team by a position label.

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• 5. The 65-Game Rule

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  A threshold of 65 games out of an 82-game schedule now stands between a star and an All-NBA selection. It began in the 2023-24 season, as part of a push to reduce load management, the practice of resting top players.

  The count is stricter than simply appearing on the court. A player earns credit for a game only if he played at least 20 minutes. There is some give, though: up to two near misses, with 15 to 19 minutes played, can count toward the 65.

  Injuries get their own protection. A player who suffers a season-ending injury can qualify with 62 credited games. The collective bargaining agreement also names a category it calls bad faith circumstances, which carries its own protection.

  The rule applies to most of the major regular-season awards, and the All-NBA Team is among them.

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• 6. The Record Book

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  LeBron James holds the record with twenty-one All-NBA selections. Before he passed them, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan shared the mark at fifteen.

  On the first team, James stands alone with thirteen honors. He is also the only player to earn first-team selections as a member of three different teams. Bryant and Karl Malone are tied for second-most first-team honors, with eleven each.

  Malone and James share another record of eleven. Each was named to the first team eleven years in a row.

  The list of players with at least ten selections is short. It includes Hall of Famers from the earliest decades, such as Bob Cousy and Jerry West, alongside the active stars of the present.

  The geography of the honor has widened too. Hakeem Olajuwon became the first international player named to an All-NBA team, in 1985-86. Since 2019, at least two international players have made the first team each season. In 2023, the number reached four for the first time.

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