Why Can't NBA Awards Voters See the Obvious MVP Front-Runner?
Nikola Jokić is having one of the greatest individual seasons in NBA history. For the third season in a row. As the two-time reigning MVP.
And yet, prior to Sunday's 40-point, 27-rebound, 10-assist triple-double (no typos there), he'd received, at best, minimal MVP buzz for this season.
In the first edition of ESPN's MVP straw poll, published late last week, Jokić finished fifth and only received one first-place vote. There are still four players with shorter betting odds on FanDuel's Sportsbook. He hasn't been first on NBA.com's MVP Ladder once all season.
But he's still dominating in every way he did in 2020-21 and 2021-22. In some ways, he's even gotten better.
After his "not since Wilt Chamberlain" triple-double (an increasingly common descriptor for Jokić), he's averaging 25.2 points, 10.9 rebounds and 9.0 assists in just 32.9 minutes per game (27.5 points, 11.5 rebounds and 10.1 assists per 75 possessions).
With the return of Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. (who's been back on the injured list since November 23), Jokić's scoring and rebounding rates are slightly down, but he's had a number of reminder performances of late.
And before he started stacking those games up, Jokić was distributing to teammates and converting the shots he did take at career-best levels.
In what could now be characterized as an off night for the big man, Jokić went 13-of-26 from the field for his 40 points against the Charlotte Hornets. And that somehow dropped his true shooting percentage to 69.2.
He's on track to have the best true shooting percentage of all time for a season in which a player put up at least 15 shots per game. And the rest of the top 10 on that list is inhabited by Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Charles Barkley, Adrian Dantley, Anthony Davis (if he maintains his current level of play) and Jokić's 2021-22.
Had enough? Too bad, the 2022-23 resume doesn't end there.
- Jokić leads (by pretty wide margins) the NBA in Basketball Reference's box plus/minus and FiveThirtyEight's RAPTOR (two of the internet's more popular catch-all metrics that endeavor to encapsulate all or most of a player's contributions into one number).
- The Denver Nuggets are plus-11.1 points per 100 possessions with Jokić on the floor and minus-15.9 when he's off, giving him a plus-27.0 net rating swing that, you guessed it, leads the league.
- Jokić is plus-205 in raw plus-minus, a mark that trails only Jayson Tatum's plus-216, despite the fact that Jokić has played three fewer games.
- Basketball Reference's MVP Tracker ("based on a model built using previous voting results") pegs Jokić as the eventual 2022-23 winner.
With the exception of raw plus-minus, Jokić was in the same spots in all of those leaderboards prior to Sunday. The big performance only solidified his positions. So why, with such an absurdly strong case to win a third straight MVP, have so many people seemingly been intent on handing anyone else the MVP?
Well, for one thing, it's early. In ESPN's first edition of the 2021-22 MVP straw poll, Jokić was fourth. Of course, he went on to win the award. In what sometimes turns into a war of attrition, Jokić has a strong record of availability. Coming into 2022-23, he'd averaged 75.3 appearances per season. If that continues along with his remarkably consistent production, analysts and fans will be forced to acknowledge Jokić's presence in the MVP debate.
But he'll still have to overcome the bigger reason for the mass disregard of this campaign: good old-fashioned voter fatigue, which came for plenty of legends before Jokić.
HBO's Bomani Jones certainly has a point. Giannis Antetokounmpo's production didn't drop much after his second MVP (though it's not hard to argue Jokić's case that year). In 2010-11, LeBron James comfortably led the NBA in box plus/minus, but Derrick Rose stole the honor as his Chicago Bulls finished first in the East. Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns finished first in the West in 1992-93, but Michael Jordan was undoubtedly the better and more productive individual player. The same logic won out in 1972-73, when Dave Cowens beat Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose numbers were simply better.
The common thread through all of the above is a potential MVP threepeat cut off by someone on a team with a better record. The underlying, often unsaid, factor there is that voters and fans simply don't want to add to a club that currently has just three members.
Right now, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird are the only players in league history to win three straight MVPs. There's an idea that giving a third straight to Jokić will act as a tacit endorsement of him being on the same level of those three.
The problem with the above is that it's not called "the best player on the best team" award, even if that's how it's often framed (now and through history). It's also not called the "most valuable player who's already won a championship" award. It's the [insert given season] Most Valuable Player, and under a plain-language analysis, Jokić has one of the strongest cases in the league.
If rewarding Jokić puts him in the company of Russell, Wilt and Bird, so be it. As we were reminded on Sunday, we should at least be used to the comparisons between Jokić and Chamberlain.
Nuggets' Nikola Jokić Wows Ja Morant, Twitter with Monster Triple-Double vs. Hornets
Throughout the early part of the 2022-23 season, the NBA MVP conversation has centered on players like Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum and Dallas Mavericks phenom Luka Dončić.
It seemed like Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokić was being left out of the discussion, but his performance on Sunday against the Charlotte Hornets reminded everyone why he was named MVP in each of the past two seasons.
Jokić had a monster triple-double with 40 points, 27 rebounds and 10 assists to propel the Nuggets to a 119-115 win at Ball Arena. The 27-year-old grabbed 20 boards in the first half alone and shot 13-of-26 from the field in the victory. It was his second 40-point outing in his past three games.
NBA Twitter was blown away by Jokić's performance on Sunday:
The Nuggets opened the month of December with three straight losses, leading many to question whether they can compete against the elite teams in the Western Conference. However, Denver has reeled off wins in four of its past five games, and Jokić has been a major reason why.
After a somewhat slow start to the season, the Serbian seems to have found a groove in recent weeks. During this month, he's averaging 29.6 points, 11.6 rebounds and 9.1 assists on 63.0 percent shooting from the field.
Jokić will look to keep up his dominance when the Nuggets (18-11) host the Memphis Grizzlies (19-10) in a marquee primetime matchup on Tuesday night.
Nikola Jokic Says He Wants to Be 'The Tim Duncan of the Denver Nuggets'
Nikola Jokic is already one of the greatest players in Denver Nuggets history, and he may not stop until he achieves franchise legend status.
"I want to be the Tim Duncan of the Denver Nuggets," Jokic told reporters at Denver's media day Monday. "But I need to win a couple championships to be him."
The two-time NBA MVP is on a Duncan-like trajectory in one respect since he has spent his entire career with the Nuggets. He's going to remain in the Mile High City for the foreseeable future as well after signing a five-year, $272 million supermax extension.
Plenty of stars have pledged allegiance to their current team, only to leave at a later date. In the case of Jokic, his actions have backed up his words.
It wasn't just that the 27-year-old agreed to a massive deal with the Nuggets; the agreement came with almost no drama whatsoever.
There weren't weeks and months of breathless discourse about whether Jokic would stay in Denver and what his departure would mean for the Nuggets and the NBA as a whole. Following a first-round exit in the 2022 playoffs, he indicated he would sign a supermax extension and that was that.
Assuming he never does leave Colorado, Jokic will have a hard time matching the five titles Duncan won with the San Antonio Spurs across 19 seasons.
In that respect, Dirk Nowitzki is probably the better benchmark. Nowitzki won only one championship with the Dallas Mavericks, but that basically granted him sainthood in the city of Dallas.
For Jokic, bringing the Nuggets their first title would basically have the same effect in Denver.
Nuggets 2022-23 Schedule: Top Games, Championship Odds and Record Predictions
Nikola Jokic spent the entire 2021-22 season propping up the Denver Nuggets by his lonesome.
Help is on the way.
Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. are expected back at full health this season after combining to play a grand total of nine games a year ago. Murray missed the entire season while recovering from an ACL tear, while Porter missed all but nine games after undergoing surgery on his back.
You know who will probably go into this season with a tired back? Jokic, from carrying the Nuggets all last season.
Jokic won his second straight MVP by eclipsing the performance from his first MVP campaign, putting up averages of 27.1 points, 13.8 rebounds and 7.9 assists. The Nuggets will hope that the health of Jokic's two co-stars allows him to perhaps take on less of a burden in the regular season in search of a deeper run into the playoffs.
Let's take a look at Denver's schedule and see how it shakes out.
2022-23 Nuggets Schedule Details
Season Opener: at Utah Jazz (Oct. 19)
Championship Odds: +2100 (via FanDuel)
Full Schedule: NBA.com
Top Matchups
Golden State Warriors (Oct. 21, Feb. 2, April 2)
It won't take the sting out of the Nuggets' first-round loss, but their first game against the defending champs may be a strong barometer of where they stand this season.
Jokic faced a nearly impossible task of taking down the Warriors during the 2022 postseason, one made all the worse by Jordan Poole turning into the third Splash Brother over the six-game series.
With Murray and Porter back in the fold, this should be a fairer matchup—and a battle of two of the Western Conference's best teams. Jokic presents the Warriors with one of their most difficult defensive matchups. He's taller than Draymond Green and can match his strength, and he overwhelms Kevon Looney down on the block.
Provided Murray gets his initial burst back off the dribble, he's also a matchup nightmare for the less-than-stellar defensive trio of Stephen Curry, Poole and the injury-diminished Klay Thompson.
Philadelphia 76ers (Jan. 28, March 27)
For two straight years, Nikola Jokic has thwarted Joel Embiid's bid for NBA MVP and first-team All-NBA center.
Jokic's Nuggets have also won the head-to-head battle 3-1.
That said, neither team has been at full strength as this budding rivalry has built up. Jokic went long stretches without Murray and Porter, while Embiid played stretches without Ben Simmons and with James Harden at less than 100 percent.
With all of their co-stars seemingly healthy and both teams seeing themselves as title contenders, an Embiid-Jokic head-to-head may have the actual competitiveness level you'd expect from two superstars competing for MVPs.
At the least, it will be a fun game between two of the best teams in the NBA.
Season Forecast
The Nuggets are the Western Conference's biggest "what if?" of the last two seasons. After shockingly making their way to the conference finals during the 2020 bubble, Denver came back stronger with an MVP-caliber Jokic and a version of Porter seemingly on the precipice of stardom.
The Nuggets then cashed in some of their trade chips to add Aaron Gordon at the 2021 deadline and looked very much like a sleeper title contender.
Then...it all fell apart.
Murray tore his ACL just before the end of the regular season, Gordon and Porter both wilted in their second-round series against the Phoenix Suns and the Nuggets navigated their way through a largely forgettable 2021-22 campaign.
Now, the good news: The West is still mostly wide open.
A new, rising contender emerged in Memphis last season, but there is no obvious juggernaut. The Phoenix Suns did not do much to get better after their second-round upset loss to the Dallas Mavericks, the Utah Jazz blew up their whole roster and no one quite knows what's going on in Los Angeles—on either side of the hallway.
If the Nuggets play up to their potential, they'll be on the short list of title contenders.
Record Prediction: 55-27
21+ and present in AZ, CO, CT, IA, IL, IN, LA, MI, NJ, NY, PA, TN, VA, or WV. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, IN, IL, NJ, PA, VA), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-800-270-7117 for confidential help (MI), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY(467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN), or visit www.1800gambler.net (WV).