LATEST UPDATES: Once more, this season’s All-NBA team will resemble an All-World squad.

Though voting hasn’t started yet, it seems pretty certain that Nikola Jokic of Denver will win the NBA MVP award this season, extending the record to six straight years in which a player who wasn’t born in the United States has taken home the honor.

During award season, there are other global trends that are expected to persist.

In the rare event that Jalen Brunson of New York scores at least 101 points each game this week, Luka Doncic of Dallas will emerge victorious in the scoring competition. Unless there is a significant shift in the stats, Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento will defeat Rudy Gobert of Minnesota to earn the rebounding title. Gobert might repeat as defensive player of the year. Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio will win the blocked-shot competition and is a surefire candidate for rookie of the year.

Serbia is home to Jokic. Doncic is a native of Slovenia. Although Sabonis was born in the United States, his family is from Lithuania, and he plays for Lithuania internationally. Gobert and Wembanyama hail from France, the country that will host the Olympics in less than four months. Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece) of Milwaukee and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada) of Oklahoma City are lock to be selected to the All-NBA team, most likely as first-team selections. It’s also important to remember that Joel Embiid, a native of Cameroon who became an American citizen this summer and will probably compete in the Olympics, was on track to win MVP and a scoring championship when injuries wrecked his plans.

Naturally, this is not a novel concept. NBA titles and MVP awards already belong to Jokic and Antetokounmpo. It will not be long before Doncic is named an MVP. Jayson Tatum of Boston was the lone player born in the United States to make the first team All-NBA last season, and Tatum will most likely do it again this year despite Embiid’s ineligibility due to the new NBA participation rules and the 65-game minimum needed to be considered.

Embiid praised the leading contenders for MVP, including Jokic, Gilgeous-Alexander, Doncic, and Antetokounmpo, saying, “Obviously, all great candidates.” “Everyone should win. It’s really too bad that there can only be one winner.

The last player born in the United States to win MVP was James Harden in 2018. Since then, international players have received 456 of the 503 first-place MVP votes that are conceivable (there are 100 voters, and in three of those years, there was an additional “fan vote”). Over that time, overseas players have received 91% of the first-place votes, and this year shouldn’t be any different. In 2022 and 2023, every first-place vote was cast for an international participant.

And with the playoffs fast approaching, those international names are going to be in the brightest part of the spotlight once again. Jokic and the Nuggets have a title to defend. Antetokounmpo and the Bucks have a chance to shake off a frankly disappointing second half of the regular season. Doncic and the Mavericks are back in the playoffs after last season’s collapse. Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder are going to have home-court in Round 1; not bad for a franchise that some likely figured was still in rebuilding mode entering the year. Orlando has the inside track on a top-four seed in the Eastern Conference, and Franz Wagner — one of the reasons Germany won the Basketball World Cup last summer — is a big part of the Magic surge.

“Players in this league — not referring to All-Stars but overall now — represent 45 countries and are roughly 30% of this league, and a number that’s continuing to grow, including, of course, some of the very best players, MVP-quality players in this league,” Commissioner Adam Silver said at the All-Star break.

Silver told CNN a couple weeks ago that the league is kicking around new ideas to try to fix the All-Star Game, and one of the notions is again the concept of a U.S. vs. The World game. He wants a competitive game; players listened to those pleas and still played absolutely no defense in this year’s game at Indianapolis, where the 200-point mark by a team got crossed for the first time. So, it’s time for a new idea, and playing into the depth of the international star roster is a solid one.

“Look at the magnitude of the pool of international players coming into this league,” Silver said. “Look at the amount of basketball that’s being played on a global basis … it’s remarkable to watch what these guys now physically are able to do on the floor.”

And it has been for some time. This was always David Stern’s vision when he was commissioner, a global league, a global game with global stars. The NBA has it, maybe at a higher level than ever. That’ll be evident in the playoffs. That’ll be evident in the award voting, too.