2020 NBA Awards Season

The Perfect 2020 All-NBA Teams

Which Los Angeles superstars get snubbed from First Team All-NBA? Jokic, Gobert, or Embiid at center? And which guards and forwards sneak onto Third Team?

THE NBA MAY FINALLY RETURN SOON, but we forge on ahead with our 2019–20 NBA Awards. It looks like we’ll soon get around eight more “regular season” games from the teams that matter, but that’s probably not enough to shift the key NBA awards in any meaningful way.

All-NBA teams are always interesting, and they get more complicated every year as positions get murkier. Many voters choose fuzzy math to shoehorn their favorite 15 choices onto an All-NBA team, but that’s not fair. LeBron James and Anthony Davis started next to JaVale McGee, Avery Bradley, and Danny Green. That’s two guards and a center, and that means LeBron and Davis are forwards, no matter how nice it’d be to slot them elsewhere to balance the All-NBA teams. We play positionless basketball in 2020, but All-NBA teams define positions, so we’re following the rules.

That means two elite Los Angeles forwards get left off First Team, and it also leaves a tricky choice at center and some difficult decisions as we fill out the Third Team with a slew of worthy options. All-NBA teams are about choosing the 15 best players to represent the season, and a lot can change in one year. This year’s First Team features three different starters…