Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic, who earlier this month won his third Most Valuable Player award in four years, was the star of this year’s All-NBA teams. This is Jokic’s sixth consecutive selection to the first team and his fourth overall.
Jokic, who was replaced on the first team by Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, the 2022–23 MVP, won the voting this year. This is the first year that the award is positionless, partly due to the yearly brawl between the two players over the one first-team All-NBA center berth.
The irony of that this season is that Embiid was among a number of players who made the All-NBA team the previous year but were ineligible this year because of the newly implemented 65-game rule for top awards, including Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell, and New York Knicks forward Julius Randle.
Jokic was joined on the first team, despite the rule change, by the other four players who were named first-team All-NBA last year, in addition to Embiid: Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Boston Celtics, Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, and Jayson Tatum of the Dallas Mavericks.
It was Tatum’s third consecutive selection, Doncic’s fifth consecutive, Antetokounmpo’s sixth consecutive, and Gilgeous-Alexander’s second consecutive first-team pick. The only two first-team selections that were agreed upon were Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander.
Joining Tim Duncan and Kevin Durant, Doncic became the third player to have five first-team All-NBA honors before to turning 26.
The All-NBA nods for Doncic and Gilgeous-Alexander indicate that they are eligible to sign supermax deals in 2025, which would both be records.
Doncic is eligible to sign a $346 million five-year contract, which will pay roughly $60 million in 2026–2027 and roughly $79 million in 2030–2031 in total. Gilgeous-Alexander will be qualified to sign a $294 million, four-year contract extension. His starting salary would be approximately $65 million in 2027–2028; by the last year, 2030–2031; he would have made slightly more than $81 million, or almost $1 million each game. For the first time ever, an NBA player would make more than $80 million a year.see more….
