Celtics' Marcus Smart leads NBA's All-Defensive first team

After winning the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award, it’s only right that Marcus Smart led the way on the All-Defensive team.

Smart received the most first-place votes and most total points while being named to the All-Defensive First Team on Friday night, the league announced.

He was followed closely by Phoenix’s Mikal Bridges, who took second in the Defensive Player of the Year race. Utah’s Rudy Gobert, Milwaukee star and MVP finalist Giannis Antetokounmpo and Memphis’ Jaren Jackson Jr. then rounded out the first team.

Smart, Bridges and Gobert were the three finalists for the Defensive Player of the Year award, which was announced earlier this postseason. Smart is just the sixth guard to take home the honors, and the first since Gary Payton did so in the 1995-96 season.

Smart is the only player named to the first team that's still in the postseason. He and the Celtics are currently tied 1-1 with the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals.

Draymond Green sneaks into second team

Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo just barely missed out on making the first team by a single point. He was joined on the second team by Milwaukee’s Jrue Holiday, Philadelphia’s Matisse Thybulle, Boston’s Robert Williams and Golden State’s Draymond Green — who received the fewest votes with 34 points.

Green was talking about the announcement on TNT on Friday night ahead of the Warriors’ Game 2 matchup with the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals. In his eyes, despite coming in last, he should have been on the first team instead.

“I thought I would have made first team,” Green said when he was congratulated by TNT’s Ernie Johnson.

Regardless, Green has now earned the honor seven times in his 10 seasons in the NBA.

“It’s incredible,” he said on TNT. “I came into this league, they said I’d fail because they didn’t know who I would guard. It just goes to show that these people don’t really know what they’re talking about.”