Officially Unofficial 2026 NBA All-Star Picks

In the space below, you will find my officially unofficial NBA All-Star starter selections. I don’t have an official ballot, but given the amount of time and energy I put into watching and analyzing this league every day and night, I wanted to get my picks on (virtual) paper before the full rosters are announced on Sunday.

That being said, here a few things to know before we get into the picks:

• This “ballot” does not count. So if you want to get angry about it, save your energy! It doesn’t mean anything anyway and you can rest easy knowing that dummies like me will not affect whether or not your favorite player makes it.
• However, if I didn’t vote for your favorite player, please know from the bottom of my heart that it’s not because I hate and/or didn’t watch your favorite team. It’s because I hate you, personally.
• I do not give extra credit for team success and feel no need to have specific teams represented with a certain number of players because of where that team falls in the standings. The reward for being a really good team is the wins. Team record is a factor, but it is just a factor — not a determinative one.

Players in each section are in alphabetical order.

Eastern Conference

Starters

• Giannis Antetokounmpo
• Jaylen Brown
• Jalen Brunson
• Cade Cunningham
• Tyrese Maxey

Reserves

• Scottie Barnes
• Jalen Duren
• Jalen Johnson
• Donovan Mitchell
• Norm Powell
• Michael Porter Jr.
• Pascal Siakam

I considered the five starters, plus Barnes, Johnson, and Mitchell to be stone-cold locks for the roster. I just don't see how you can make an Eastern Conference All-Star team and not have those guys on it.

The last starting spot for me came down to Mitchell and Cunningham, and it really could have gone either way. I ended up leaning toward Cunningham's rebounding and passing (he's leading the league in assists per game) over Mitchell's superior scoring and efficiency (and hot damn has he been amazingly efficient), but if you asked me tomorrow, I could just as easily have tipped in the opposite direction.

Barnes is an inner-circle Defensive Player of the Year candidate if Victor Wembanyama doesn't play enough games to qualify. He's outrageous. And he's also at 19.5 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 5.6 assists per night. Johnson is averaging 23-10-8 on 51-35-78 shooting and leading the league in defensive rebounds. He's so good that he got the Hawks to trade Trae Young for nothing because they wanted to orient the entire team around him instead.

Duren was a borderline lock as well. If the award made any sense at all he would be firmly in the mix for Most Improved Player, but apparently his odds are pretty far down the board. His ramp up in usage with only a slight dip in scoring efficiency has been so huge for the Pistons. His ability to create off the dribble from the elbows or even in transition has been a revelation. He still rebounds the hell out of the ball and his defense at least helps hold things together for the second-best point prevention unit in the league. (Isaiah Stewart is the superior defender of the two of Duren is no slouch. His rim-protection numbers leave something to be desired but he's still getting better on that end.)

Powell could have been an All-Star last year in Los Angeles, but got caught up in the guard glut in the Western Conference. (I had him as an honorable mention.) He's having almost the exact same season this year as he did a year ago, posting almost the exact same efficiency numbers (and I mean literally almost exactly the same: his true shooting percentage is .614 compared with .615 last year) with a usage rate that is 1.1% higher than it was last year. His assist and rebound rates are slightly higher, but not enough to really matter. Still, this year's Eastern Conference All-Star field is not nearly as crowded as last year's West, so Powell gets in for me here. His ability to always be ready to shoot and score (he still leads the league in points per touch, among players who have played more than 15 games) is key to making Miami's offense work, to the extent that it does work (the Heat are still 19th in offensive rating), and the Heat have desperately needed what he brings with Tyler Herro missing the entire season and Bam Adebayo not having his best offensive year.

MPJ has wildly exceeded my expectations this year. I thought he would struggle outside of the Nikola Jokic cocoon. I didn't think he would shoot nearly as well. I didn't think he would be able to create his own offense. I thought he would barely play as the Nets tanked their way to the bottom, then get traded at the deadline. Instead, he's doing basically the same stuff he did in Denver, but on a significantly higher usage rate and while creating more of his own offense than ever before. He's posting the best assist rate of his career, by far (it's more than double his previous career high); and the second-best defensive rebound rate of his career. He's also played 82% of the games, only sitting out here and there. He could still get traded, but if he does, the Nets would probably get quite a lot for him. Certainly more than I expected when they made the Cam Johnson deal. Just a fantastic, unexpected (for me) season from this guy.

Siakam has kind of been toiling in obscurity because the Pacers are so bad, but I won't let that impact my view of what he's done. As I said, I do consider team success in making my picks, but it is just one factor among many, and not a determinative one. Siakam has been good enough to override the fact that the Pacers stink. He's had to take on more of the burden as both a scorer and playmaker with Tyrese Haliburton out, and with Andrew Nembhard, T.J. McConnell, and Bennedict Mathurin all missing not-insignificant portions of the season. He's handled it all with aplomb and he's not let his defense drop off too much. (I'd say he's been basically neutral on that end, which is fair enough considering the burden he's been forced to carry on the opposite side of the ball.) The Pacers are actually pretty decent with him on the floor, but they're a total disaster when he sits. He's still really, really good.

Also considered: Bam Adebayo, LaMelo Ball, Josh Giddey, Evan Mobley, Karl-Anthony Towns, Franz Wagner, Derrick White, and others I'm probably forgetting

Western Conference

Starters

• Luka Doncic
• Anthony Edwards
• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
• Nikola Jokic
• Victor Wembanyama

Reserves

• Deni Avdija
• Stephen Curry
• Kevin Durant
• Chet Holmgren
• Kawhi Leonard
• Jamal Murray
• Alperen Sengun

I had even more Western Conference locks than I did in the East. In addition to the starting five, I don't see a way that you couldn't have Curry (who is an actual starter, whereas I had Edwards, who has been every bit as good in about 10% more minutes than Steph has played so far), Durant, Holmgren, Murray, and Sengun. So really, I had just two spots available for something like 12 players.

Durant just keeps humming as essentially the exact same guy he's been for 18 years. He is a human metronome, just putting up 26-5-5 on 51-41-88 every single night. Holmgren might be the second-best defender in the league. (Might be.) He's also averaging 18-9 with 2 blocks in just 29 minutes a night. He's shooting 38% from three again and making a career-best 66% of his twos.

Murray did not get off to his seemingly-annual slow start, and he's having the best season of his career: his 25.9 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 7.4 assists per game are all career highs. And he's doing it on the best shooting efficiency of his career as well. He's even kept the Nuggets alive without Jokic.

Avdija is averaging 26-7-7 on 61.6% true shooting, having improved his scoring efficiency over what he did last year despite increasing his usage rate by nearly 6%. He's posting by far a career high in assist rate (32%) and his turnover rate is actually down from a year ago despite his having taken on significantly more responsibility as a scorer and creator. (Only nine players are posting usage and assist rates north of 29%, per Basketball-Reference. I have six of them making my All-Star teams and the other three as honorable mentions.) His free-throw rate is insane. (It's sixth in the NBA and four of the guys ahead of him are Adem Bona, Moussa Diabate, Rudy Gobert, and Steven Adams, who mostly don't create the free throws themselves.) He's been one of the best drivers in the league this season, period, end sentence. The Blazers are also 7.5 points per 100 non-garbage time possessions better with him on the floor than off. I didn't think there was a way I could leave him off this team.

Kawhi has played only 32 games heading into Tuesday night's game against the Jazz, but he has been so overwhelmingly great in those 32 games that I couldn't help but give him a slot here. He's averaging 28-6-3.5 on, essentially, 50-40-94 shooting. His 63.3% true shooting mark is the best of his career. He's taking a career-high 7.3 attempts per game from beyond the arc. He's almost doubled his free-throw attempts per game from 3.3 last year (it had been trending downward since 2019) to 6.2 this year. He's leading the league in steals for the first time since 2015. (And his 2.2 per game are the second-most of his career, after the 2.3 he averaged during that 2015 season.) The Clippers are once again better with him on the court than off by a near-double-digit points per 100 possessions margin. Other guys have played more games and minutes, but I don't think they've made the same overall impact — especially over the last month-and-a-half as the Clippers have surged after their disastrous start. Said start still counts, obviously, but it's not like Kawhi was terrible during that stretch. He was still awesome. I'm not holding the record against him.

Also considered: Devin Booker, Jimmy Butler, Stephon Castle, De'Aaron Fox, Rudy Gobert, James Harden, LeBron James, Lauri Markkanen, Austin Reaves, Julius Randle, Amen Thompson, and others I'm probably forgetting