The simplest All-NBA solution is the best: drop the positionality

This isn't rocket science.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Battle of Lights, Coney Island; Joseph Stella, 1913-14

Readers know I love few things like I love writing bloated arguments for reforming some NBA rule or system or whatever. But that’s not the situation today. Lots of other writers are spilling lots of ink arguing about All-NBA voting given that Joel Embiid and Nikola Jokic are both eligible at center and forward this season. If both players make first team, it will be the first time this season either is actually a forward this season by the basketball norms the NBA is operating under.

But the fix here is dead simple: just remove positions from the All-NBA equation. Think about it this way: if you were creating a team of the best five players this season, you’d absolutely put Embiid and Jokic both on it. Who cares if they are both very tall?! You’d have them both, plus Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ja Morant and another guard or forward (I’d probably lean LeBron at this point, with Stephen Curry and Devin Booker in the mix). This would be a very good team. You’d win every game you’d play, even against teams with two forwards, two guards and a center.

Instead, the NBA twists itself in knots to make players eligible at positions they never play to help tortured voters, and voters twist themselves in knots arguing about technicalities, historic legacies and whatever. Just simplify it. I promise you that if the league’s next DeAndre Jordan never gets an All-NBA nod despite being one of the league’s top three true centers, or if Rudy Gobert has to miss a year or two on the honor list, it’s going to be OK.

Just remember that while NBA media voters complain about the immense responsibility of All-NBA voting given its impact on maximum contract allowances, it wasn’t really voters’ ballots that cost Jayson Tatum $30 million: it was the dumbass positionality rule. In 2020-21, the year in question, Tatum earned more overall voting points than Kyrie Irving and should have been the 15th player. But he received more forward votes than guard votes while eligible for both, so the NBA considered him as a forward in balloting, and he fell short of Jimmy Butler and Paul George there.

Kill the positionality rule and you get the best five players on first team and the best 15 overall. This is easy. Don’t overthink it.

And spare me the arguments about history. In the old days 10 players in a league of like 108 players made All-NBA. Something like 9% of players got the honor. Today it’s 15 spots for 450 roster spaces, so 3% of players get the honor. Changing the positionality rules does not disrespect the league’s elders. Times change! How the league celebrates its best players can, too.