Luka Dončić brings the ball up. He runs the offense. He decides when his team scores. And the league's front offices just voted him the best small forward in basketball.
That's the joke sitting inside the 2026-27 GM survey, released October 15. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ran away with best point guard at 67%. Anthony Edwards took best shooting guard at 73%. Giannis Antetokounmpo won power forward at 70%, and Nikola Jokić took center at 63% over Victor Wembanyama. Every one of those was a blowout. The only close call on the whole ballot was small forward, where the Lakers' Luka edged Boston's Jayson Tatum, 37% to 33%.
It was close because none of the people filling this out actually think Luka is a small forward.
These voters believe Shai is the best point guard alive. They also know Luka is, by any honest description of what he does on the floor, a point guard too. Rather than make themselves choose between the two, they let Luka float to the wing, where he could collect votes from everyone who wanted to honor him without ranking him behind Shai. The small forward slot became a holding pen, a spot where two lead guards can both finish first and nobody has to look anybody in the eye.
The survey has pegged Luka as the best small forward two years running. The same people made the same dodge twice and called it a result.
Positions are loose tags now, sure, fuzzy enough that arguing over Luka's label can look like missing the point of the whole exercise. Except the survey built that exercise around five positions. If the categories don't mean anything, cut the category questions. You don't get to hand out five position crowns and then shrug at the one crown that makes no sense. The GMs wanted a tidy starting five, so they shoved the awkward guy into the one spot where he'd disappear.
Nobody in the poll doubts Luka is one of the best players alive. That's exactly why they couldn't leave him off. The real issue is the people holding the pencils. They know what he is and ranked him somewhere else because the truth was inconvenient to their ballot.
So spare me the shrug about labels. Thirty front offices looked at a man who runs his team's offense every possession and wrote down "small forward." They knew exactly what they were doing.
