NBA awards 2024: Predicting the positionless All-NBA and All-Defensive teams

The new 65-game threshold to be eligible for the league’s top end-of-season awards has received significant attention, and deservedly so. But there’s another substantial change in effect for some coveted awards: positionless voting for the league’s All-NBA and All-Defensive teams.

In prior years, voters selected two guards, two forwards and one center for each of the three All-NBA teams and each of the two All-Defensive teams. But not anymore. The 100 writers and broadcasters who will vote for those teams will be directed to select the most deserving players, regardless of their positions. As with the 65-game threshold (which, by the way, includes some caveats that we won’t delve into here), the move to positionless voting was agreed to by the NBA and National Basketball Players Association in their new collective bargaining agreement. 

To break down how positionless voting will impact the process from voters’ points of view, The Athletic has brought together three of its writers who cover the league and cast awards votes last season: William Guillory, Kelly Iko and Josh Robbins. 

What do you think of the positionless system for determining the All-NBA and All-Defensive teams? Is removing positional requirements fair or unfair to the players compared to the prior system of choosing two guards, two forwards and one center for each of those teams? 

Josh Robbins: Let’s forget for a moment whether the new positionless system will make voters’ jobs more challenging or more simple. The only thing that should matter is whether the new system will ensure the most deserving players receive the recognition they’ve earned.

Through that lens, I think positionless voting is a step forward, especially for the All-NBA teams.

For the All-NBA teams, I welcome the change because it will prevent any scenario in which the league’s second-best player in a particular season could be excluded from the All-NBA First Team. 

An example: Last year, the All-NBA First Team was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić at guard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jayson Tatum at forward and Joel Embiid at center. I think those were the correct choices; indeed, I named those same five guys on my first-team ballot. 

But, at the same time, the first team left off the person who finished second in the MVP voting: Nikola Jokić. Because Embiid and Jokić are both centers, I had to omit one of them on my All-NBA First Team ballot, and I omitted Jokić. But Jokić had played more than well enough to be on the first team; if the voting had been positionless, he would’ve made the first team, no problem. 

Something similar applies to the All-NBA Third Team. In some years, the performance of the sixth-best guard or sixth-best forward or third-best center pales in comparison to the sixth-best players at positions with deeper talent pools. So, there have been cases when the seventh-best guard, for instance, is more deserving of making the All-NBA Third Team than the…