Victor Wembanyama made the 2025-26 All-Defensive First Team, the NBA announced Friday night. The list of 10 defenders included Chet Holmgren, Derrick White, Ausar Thompson and Rudy Gobert alongside Wembanyama on the First Team.
The weight of the vote is in the numbers. Wembanyama led the league with 3.1 blocks per game, defended at least 500 shots during the regular season and held opponents to 40.7 percent from the field when he was the primary defender. He also became the first unanimous Defensive Player of the Year in NBA history on April 20. Holmgren, the other big-name First Team pick, averaged 1.9 blocks and 0.6 steals per game and finished No. 2 in Defensive Player of the Year voting.
The full First Team was Victor Wembanyama, Chet Holmgren, Derrick White, Ausar Thompson and Rudy Gobert. The Second Team included Bam Adebayo, OG Anunoby, Scottie Barnes, Dyson Daniels and Cason Wallace. The two All-Defense teams recognize the league's 10 best defenders each season, and the selections made clear which players teams leaned on this year.
Context sharpens why this mattered tonight. Wembanyama's first-team selection in 2025-26 is the second of his young career; he was the first rookie in NBA history to claim a First Team spot in 2023-24. Holmgren's defensive on-court impact is visible in the Thunder's numbers: Oklahoma City's defensive rating was 102.3 with Holmgren on the floor and 107.9 with him off it. The Thunder compiled a 64-18 regular-season record and were the only team with multiple players earning All-Defensive recognition.
There is friction behind the tidy roster lists. Rudy Gobert's nod is described as another season of tremendous paint protection, and if he earns one more selection in the future he would become only the seventh player in league history to reach 10 All-Defense picks. That total would eclipse Michael Jordan's nine All-Defense selections and push Gobert into a small, historic group of perennial defenders. At the same time, Holmgren finished No. 2 in Defensive Player of the Year voting while sharing defensive credit with a teammate on a Thunder squad that leaned on multiple defenders to reach 64 victories.
Among the short declaratives was a longer claim from the player who dominated the awards: Wembanyama called himself "the best defender on the planet." The makeup of the All-Defense teams and the accompanying awards—unanimous DPOY, league-leading blocks and the opponent field-goal rate when defended by him—give that statement force beyond braggadocio. The selections also underline how teams and voters now value rim protection, shot deterrence and the ability to affect more than one box score line.
The verdict from these voting results is straightforward: Wembanyama's combination of volume shot deterrence and award recognition has cemented him as the defining defensive player of this season. The All-Defensive teams announced Friday night record that shift and leave the league with a clear defensive hierarchy—Wembanyama at the top, Holmgren close behind, and a small set of specialists like Gobert and perimeter stoppers filling out the top 10.
