The OFFICIAL 2025 NBA All-Lefty Team

On International Left-Handers Day, as always, we honor last season's elite Southpaw Six with a list no one can dispute

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MANCHESTER, England — This is a new one for The Committee (of One).

As regular readers surely know, Aug. 13 is a holiday that is always robustly observed and celebrated around here.

International Left-Handers Day!

The new part: This lefty is actually abroad on this occasion for the first time we can remember (in a non-Olympic year). So it really does have an international feel.

I wrote the bulk of this story, in fact, on an Avanti West Coast train this morning from London to Manchester, where the NBA is hosting a Basketball Without Borders camp this week. Among the camp instructors on a staff headlined by the LA Clippers' Ivica Zubac, Chicago's Kevin Huerter and Philadelphia coach Nick Nurse is indeed a lefty: Five-time NBA champion and former Knicks and Los Angeles Sparks coach Derek Fisher.

By now you know the Aug. 13 drill: On this date I always publish an OFFICIAL (as far as I'm concerned) and unassailable list of six players who comprise the NBA's All-Lefty Team for the current calendar year. We do it by adhering to the same format that has been employed here for years: Two backcourt selections and three frontcourt selections — just like they do on the All-Star ballot — with the bonus of a sixth man who actually came off the bench in more games than he started tacked on for posterity.

There were 53 eligible players for the six-man squad according to this Stathead list curated by my DLLS Sports colleague Bobby Karalla ... three shy of the single-season NBA record of 56 southpaws to play in at least one regular-season game in 2024-25.

To the honorees!

BACKCOURT

Jalen Brunson (New York) and James Harden (LA Clippers)

My good buddy Chris Haynes has been on me for a while now to either expand the All-Lefty Team or maybe ease up on the rigidity I inject into the selection process. De'Aaron Fox routinely gets the scroogie here because of said rigidity, but tweaking the rules to make year-to-year exceptions doesn't feel right, either.

So ...

We go with Brunson, our proverbial first name on the team sheet as the league's most decorated lefty at the moment, then pair him with Harden, who edges out Fox for the only other available slot for the second straight year.

Only two lefties, for the record, earned All-Star status last season: Brunson and Harden. Also: Only two lefties earned All-NBA honors and — you guessed it — they were Brunson (second team) and Harden (third team).

The consolation for Fox, of course, is that he just signed a four-year, $229 million contract extension with the Spurs after successfully engineering a trade from Sacramento to San Antonio. Maybe he can use a second straight All-Lefty Team snub as fuel to get back to the All-Star and All-NBA status he achieved as a King in 2022-23.

FRONTCOURT

Domantas Sabonis (Sacramento), Toumani Camara (Portland) and Julius Randle (Minnesota)

Sabonis has led the league in rebounds per game in each of his three full seasons in Sacramento. His career-best 13.9 boards per game last season were a full rebound better per game than New York's Karl-Anthony Towns at No. 2 (12.8). The disappointment of a second straight non-playoff season for the Kings and a Play-In Tournament loss at home to Dallas were never going to dislodge Sabonis from his customary spot in our All-Lefty frontcourt.

Camara, meanwhile, seemingly arrived from nowhere to crash this list (as well as the NBA's All-Defensive Team) in just his second season. Dismissed by some as a contractual throw-in as part of Portland's original trade that sent Damian Lillard to Milwaukee — before the Belgian had even played a game in the league — Camara has quickly established himself a Blazers cornerstone alongside the likes of Deni Avdija, Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson ... to the point that he was asked to serve as the Blazers' rep on the dais for the NBA Draft Lottery in mid-May.

Randle deservedly rounds out the frontcourt trio after performing well enough in his debut season in 'Sota to earn a three-year, $100 million contract extension this summer. It was the Randle-for-Towns trade on the weekend before training camps opened, remember, that wound up setting the tone for a wild 10 months on the NBA trade front. And when the Wolves went on a 17-4 surge to close the regular season and snag the West's No. 6 seed — setting up their run to the Western Conference finals for the second straight season — Randle was at the heart of all that as well.

Yet the real news in this section — yet again — is Zion Williamson's failure to earn a spot as part of our Southpaw Six. It happened in 2022 and 2023 as well and you surely understand why: Williamson played in only 30 games in 2024-25. Can he play enough in 2025-26 to reclaim All-Lefty status?

PS — Will we ever see him play in a playoff game as a Pelican?

SIXTH MAN

Brandin Podziemski (Golden State)

There were so few qualified candidates here. Once again, using the rules we've consistently employed in this space, All-Lefty Sixth Man is a domain reserved for players who came off the bench more often than they started.

Possibilities thus included the LA Clippers' Amir Coffey, Milwaukee's Kevin Porter Jr. and Memphis' Luke Kennard.

The choice: Podziemski for the second year in a row.

Coffey gave us something to think about after shooting 40.9% from 3-point range, but Podziemski's importance to the Warriors — challenging as his second season proved at times after Golden State made him a virtual untouchable in trade talks — was illustrated by the 32.1 minutes per game he averaged in the playoffs. More often than not they simply play better when Podz is on the floor.