The NBA's annual All-NBA announcement is nominally a reward for past performance, but it functions more usefully as a census of power. This year's selections—with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić, and Victor Wembanyama anchoring the First Team—confirm what the playoffs have already suggested: the league's center of gravity has shifted decisively, and the old guard is running out of runway.
Gilgeous-Alexander's inclusion as the presumptive MVP frontrunner caps a season in which the Thunder guard became the most efficient high-volume scorer in the league, a distinction that once belonged exclusively to the generation he is now supplanting. Jokić, meanwhile, continues to defy the actuarial tables of big-man dominance, earning yet another First Team nod despite the Nuggets' postseason disappointments. The Serbian center has now appeared on more All-NBA First Teams than any international player in history.
The Wembanyama factor
But the selection that will age most interestingly is Wembanyama's. The Spurs center, still just 22, has leapfrogged a generation of established stars to claim a First Team spot in only his second professional season. The last player to accomplish that feat was Tim Duncan in 1999—a comparison that San Antonio's front office has studiously avoided but can no longer suppress. Wembanyama's playoff performance, including a half-court heave that has already entered the highlight canon, has transformed him from generational prospect to generational reality.
The absences that matter
Equally telling is who did not make the cut. LeBron James, for the first time since 2006, is absent from all three teams—a milestone that his camp will attribute to load management and his critics will cite as overdue. Kevin Durant's omission from the First Team, despite another efficient scoring season, reflects the voters' growing impatience with regular-season excellence that does not translate to deep playoff runs. The message is clear: the electorate has recalibrated its standards.
What the voting reveals
The positional breakdown also illuminates the league's tactical evolution. Guards now dominate the First Team, with Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Dončić occupying two of the three frontcourt-agnostic slots. The traditional center position, once the province of rim protectors and post scorers, belongs entirely to playmaking giants—Jokić and Wembanyama represent a new archetype that renders the old positional categories nearly meaningless.
Our take
All-NBA selections are backward-looking by design, but this year's teams read like a forward-looking manifesto. The league is betting on length, skill, and positional versatility over the isolation-heavy aesthetics of the previous decade. Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokić, and Wembanyama are not just the best players of this season—they are the template for the next era. The voters, for once, seem to have noticed before the rest of us.
