Now that he has a third NBA MVP trophy to put on the shelf at home beneath his horse racing medals, where exactly does Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokić stand in the all-time debates? Is he already a top 20 player? Can he enter the GOAT debate? What seems to be the likely outcome of the game if we look back two decades from now?
This may be a difficult time to have this discussion given how Jokić’s last two matches have gone. But let’s take the camera off, look at the bigger picture, and ask how high the pedestal Jokić might land on when he finally hangs up his sneakers. Fortunately, I have some tools that help us handicap this.
Let’s start here: In terms of ranking among the all-time greats, Jokić is already kind of there. He won his third MVP award in four seasons on Wednesday, finishing second in 2023, putting him in rare company with just eight other players to win the trophy three times. It’s not yet clear what would prevent him from winning a fourth or fifth, although voter fatigue has been a problem with other big players.
Having already dominated the 2023 playoffs, this award marks Jokić’s official Hall of Fame coronation. He only recently turned 29 and has only played nine NBA seasons, but in a hypothetical universe where Jokić decides to end his career tomorrow and raise ponies or learn to speak Minion or something, he would still have a strong case to be among the top 20 players in NBA history.
Beyond that, his accumulation of numerous other feats puts him in extremely rare company. He stands out as a unique driving force behind a championship team, as in 2023 he became one of only 12 players to win a title without an All-Star teammate (and is attempting to repeat that feat this year).
And unlike several others on this list, no one in Denver’s 2023 playoff rotation had Never made the All-Star team. (Little-used backup center DeAndre Jordan was their only previous All-Star.) Jokić is the only MVP to never have an All-Star, All-NBA, or All-Defense teammate in his first eight seasons, and he’s poised to make it nine if Aaron Gordon or Kentavious Caldwell-Pope don’t make the All-Defense Second Team.
Statistically, Jokić is also near the top of the mountain. Although my PER rating doesn’t hold true for pre-1974 players like Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain because the league didn’t track blocked shots and turnovers, in the 50 years since, Jokić has four of the 16 best PER ratings in a single season. , corresponding to its last four seasons. The cheesiest box plus-minus (BPM) stat gives him an even more optimistic analysis, giving him four of the six best seasons over the last 50 years. Jokić currently holds the single-season record for PER (32.9) and BPM (13.7), both set in 2021-22. And in the playoffs, he increased his scoring again, despite what happened in the last two games against Minnesota: his career playoff PER of 29.2 is the highest in NBA history .
So that’s the background; Nikola Jokić is really good at basketball. (Thanks, Einstein.) But is his career better than that of, say, Stephen Curry or Dirk Nowitzki or Bob Pettit or any other randomly selected great player you care to name?
Fortunately, I have a tool for this. I call it GOAT Points, and I introduced and explained it when Athleticism released its list of the 75 best NBA players of all time in 2021 and 2022, a list from which Jokić was then excluded. When I first made this list, Jokić hadn’t yet won his second MVP award, but he was already in the middle of an all-time season and already ranked 44th in GOAT points. Needless to say, his last three seasons have seen him rack up a mountain of other accomplishments.
In fact, when I updated the GOAT points list after the season for our Basketball 100 book (coming this winter to a bookstore near you!), after evaluating a first-team All-NBA selection and an MVP award, Jokić moved to 21st. , just behind Jerry West and just ahead of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Winning the NBA Finals MVP this year (which seems a lot less likely than a few days ago) would see him jump West; if not, he would almost certainly do it next season.
(Antetokounmpo, I should point out, is the same age as Jokić and has also been great this season; while he seems on a different career trajectory right now, he’s not out of reach for the possibilities he takes over the Joker’s head at one point indicate.)
And when will Jokic’s career end? This is obviously difficult to project, but given the all-time ranking ranges (see table below), there’s a very good chance he finishes 12th. That would put him just behind Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant and just ahead of Kevin Durant.
GOAT points, all-time leaders
Rank | Player | General practitioner |
---|---|---|
1 |
LeBron James |
859 |
2 |
Michael Jordan |
750 |
3 |
Kareem Abdul Jabbar |
660 |
4 |
Tim Duncan |
504 |
5 |
Karl Malone |
504 |
6 |
Wilt Chamberlain |
499 |
7 |
Larry Bird |
488 |
8 |
Magic Johnson |
487 |
9 |
Bill Russell |
472 |
ten |
Shaquille O’Neal |
460 |
11 |
Kobe Bryant |
457 |
12 |
Kevin Durant |
374 |
13 |
James Harden |
356 |
14 |
Oscar Robertson |
345 |
15 |
David Robinson |
335 |
16 |
Kevin Garnett |
324 |
17 |
Georges Mikan |
320 |
18 |
Bob Pettit |
318 |
19 |
Hakeem Olajuwon |
316 |
20 |
Jerry West |
316 |
21 |
*NIKOLA JOKIC* |
308 |
22 |
Giannis Antetokounmpo |
307 |
Jokić could perhaps rank 12th at the end of next season if he has another near-unanimous MVP season; more realistically, two MVPs-candidate-type seasons would probably do the trick. After that, though, there’s a tough mountain to climb to catch up with Shaq and Kobe. He would then be 31 years old and would still need several MVP candidate-level seasons to close the 84-point gap between Durant and Bryant.
Of course, I’m talking about ranking according to my own rating system, but I think it reflects the actual accomplishments here that bring a player into the GOAT discussion.
GOAT points are not perfect; he almost certainly overestimates James Harden and Karl Malone and underestimates Michael Jordan and Kevin Garnett, for example. But from a broader perspective, the themes important to Jokić’s place in the debate remain valid. In particular, it’s easy to think that Jokić could slip into the top 10 from here, but that’s not true. One thing GOAT points don’t reward is years of “hanging around”; even making the All-Star team is an extremely minor, borderline, unimportant accomplishment when you’re dealing with players of this caliber.
What the graph particularly highlights is that, as good as Jokić has been over the past four years, he would need at least another four years to realistically sniff the margins of the GOAT debate.
Compared to most players at this exalted level, Jokić got a very late start to his high-end achievements, not even making the All-Star team until age 24 and winning only four playoff series during its first seven seasons. He made up for lost time with an insane four-season run that rivals that of almost any player in history, but his stamina at this elite level will now define how high he can reach on the board.
For example, Jokić’s four-year career still pales in comparison to the league’s Mount Rushmore candidates. LeBron James spent 11 years on the All-NBA First Team and a top-five MVP candidate; Michael Jordan had 10 where he was top three in MVP voting and first-team All-NBA, capping a two-year hiatus from basketball.
Even the relatively brief (for superstars) careers of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had Jokić beat on this front; both spent nine years placing in the top three in MVP voting and making the All-NBA First Team.
For Jokić, his place in history now depends heavily on how long he can maintain this run. Other things matter too (like, uh, championships, with a repeat currently in jeopardy by the Minnesota Timberwolves), but longevity at an MVP-caliber level is the question that will loom over everything.
For now, we can say three things about Jokić’s place in history.
First, there’s a whole class of all-time great players that he’s already left in the dust; any list that doesn’t rank him among the 30 greatest players of all time, at a minimum, is laughable. GOAT Points highlights this: he is now more than 100 points ahead of John Stockton, 30th, and Elgin Baylor, 31st. I don’t think any reasonable person would conclude that either of these players can reach Jokić in an all-time ranking, even if they quit tomorrow.
Second, Jokić is very clearly on track to be a top 15 player of all time. At this point, he’s surpassing league royalty, chasing guys like Oscar Robertson and Garnett on the all-time list while trying to hold off Giannis and catch Durant.
And third, getting into the true inner circle of all-time greats – the Birds and Magics, the Shaqs and Kobes – is going to take time. Jokić definitely can getting there, and adding the fourth and fifth MVP honors would be an extremely strong argument in his favor. But to achieve this, he will have to continue at a dominant level well into his 30s.
(Photo by Nikola Jokić: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)