Jokic is not the best in the world, and has been heavily overrated (NOW YOU CAN CHANGE VOTES)

[Special_Puppy]

So I guess other all time greats never lost.

They did, and Denver hasn't lost yet. But he has won 0 series vs. a 50 win team. Here's a list (it could be expanded) of some other all time greats and how many times they won series against 50 win teams. Their teammates were largely better, but it just leaves something to be desired for a guy who's been talked about like Jokic has on here.

https://fadeawayworld.net/10-nba-stars-who-have-beaten-the-most-50-win-teams-in-playoffs-history

Jokic's teams need more team playoff success before he ascends the all-time ranking , but 2020 Clippers were +6.6 SRS team with a bunch of people missing a ton of time in the regular season. They're a joke now because of the generational choke job, but they were absolutely as strong as most NBA champions

[hardenASG13]

So I guess other all time greats never lost.

They did, and Denver hasn't lost yet. But he has won 0 series vs. a 50 win team. Here's a list (it could be expanded) of some other all time greats and how many times they won series against 50 win teams. Their teammates were largely better, but it just leaves something to be desired for a guy who's been talked about like Jokic has on here.

https://fadeawayworld.net/10-nba-stars-who-have-beaten-the-most-50-win-teams-in-playoffs-history

Jokic's teams need more team playoff success before he ascends the all-time ranking , but 2020 Clippers were +6.6 SRS team with a bunch of people missing a ton of time in the regular season. They're a joke now because of the generational choke job, but they were absolutely as strong as most NBA champions

Yeah, so then he'd have one.....although that was also in the bubble with no crowd. It would've been a game 7 on the road. It's tough to say

[zshawn10]

man just got another mvp lol

[garrick]

MVP is for the regular season not the playoffs.

[DimesandKnicks]

talking about impact stats here, not box stats. They’re about what happens on and off the court (while adjusting for who else is on the court at any given time), not about tallying box-score stats. Some (but not all) of them use box score and/or tracking data as a prior, but it’s just a prior (and is weighed in a way that correlates with impact). The primary thing driving these numbers is simply that if you isolate the impact on defense of having LeBron and Jokic on the court, it doesn’t look very different. Some of that is driven by the impact of things like Jokic’s great defensive rebounding, but it’s not because the stats are just weighing box score data—rather, it’d be because great defensive rebounding is impactful. Anyways, I gather that you’re not familiar with impact data. You should look them up. They’re the best we have in terms of measuring defense.

I've tried to look them up and I'm having a hard time not only finding how they are calculated but I can't even find player rankings for DRPM. Can you provide me your source for DRPM rankings/calculation; D-Lebron rankings/calculations, DRAPM rankings/calculations etc. etc.

I don’t think that’s correct at all—these are players who were praised for defense. As was Larry Hughes, as another example.

They had solid defenders. Good at best. No one was elite. Hughes wasn’t the same defender after breaking his foot.

If “no one was elite” but the entire defense as a whole was elite (which it undeniably was), then what’s your point? They had an elite defense. And that elite defense is what carried them. Whether they were elite because they had elite individual defenders or they were elite because they played incredibly well together as a defensive unit (or, more likely, a combination of the two) is largely beside the point. The fact is that LeBron’s supporting cast played amazing defense, and it was the team’s defense that carried them.

The bottom line is that that team was absolutely completely carried by its defense. They had a below-average offense in the regular season, and an awful offense in the playoffs. But they had an elite defense in the regular season, and an historically great defense in the playoffs. Their defense is very obviously what led them to the Finals. And defense is an inherently team effort and LeBron wasn’t even really a noted defender at all individually at the time. So the idea that LeBron carried that team is *extremely* dubious. He carried the load on a side of the ball that the team was genuinely bad at, while just being another cog in the wheel on the side of the ball that actually carried the team to success. There’s really a much better argument that Mike Brown carried that team, with his coaching on the defensive side of the ball.

Agree to disagree here. They don't make it to the finals if you restructure that roster around Dwight Howard or another future all-nba player.

[art_tatum]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

[eyeatoma]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

Alot of this has to do with the advent of advanced stats and the fact that he laps the field there. Apart from his finals run he hasn't done anything extraordinary in the playoffs. He made the conference finals once. He is a fantastic player, but no where near the typical 3 time MVP candidate. Jokic also greatly relies on his teammates for his success like point guards, so his affect on the game although gargantuan is somewhat dependent on the performance of his team. Compare the record of other 3 time MVPs and they have generally been far more successful. His peers who are as good as him/ Embiid/Giannis/Luka/SGA are either too young, have poor teams that have to be propped up, or have had their careers derailed do to injuries, as a result Jokic has won many of his MVPs because there isnt' anyone better to give it to.

[PlatinumState]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

Breh Shai's 25. Rose won at 22, Kareem 23, Giannis 24......and Jokic won his first at 25
Do people think Shai's like 21 or something?

[Special_Puppy]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

LeBron won 4 MVPs before won his second championship. Kareem won *6* MVPs before he won his second championship. Still a lot of time for his team to have more post-season success.

[Special_Puppy]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

Alot of this has to do with the advent of advanced stats and the fact that he laps the field there. Apart from his finals run he hasn't done anything extraordinary in the playoffs. He made the conference finals once. He is a fantastic player, but no where near the typical 3 time MVP candidate. Jokic also greatly relies on his teammates for his success like point guards, so his affect on the game although gargantuan is somewhat dependent on the performance of his team. Compare the record of other 3 time MVPs and they have generally been far more successful. His peers who are as good as him/ Embiid/Giannis/Luka/SGA are either too young, have poor teams that have to be propped up, or have had their careers derailed do to injuries, as a result Jokic has won many of his MVPs because there isnt' anyone better to give it to.

Jokic has never had a great supporting cast and on top of that they've been injured 3 out of the 4 past post-seasons
2021: Murray out.
2022: Murray+MPJ out
2023: Everyone healthy. Comfortably win championship against admittedly easy competition
2024: Murray (and also probably KCP) hammered by injuries

[hundreth]

I think talent wise he's incredible and clearly the best in the world at the moment.

HOWEVER, it doesn't seem he has the same passion and fire other GOATs possessed. Jokic wants to do as little as possible to win, and go back to his life with horses.

Jordan, Kobe, and even LeBron wanted to stomp on your throat and kill you.

[Swish77]

I've been saying this since his first mvp. He's an incredible system player, but he lacks competitive fire and toughness to be an ATG player. His MVP as a 6 seed will be locked at as THE worst mvp season in history. It'll make the Rose and Nash wins seem unanimous.

Jokic is a guy that needs a superstar like Murray to make his game work. He can't take over without that second punch on the perimeter the way other ATGs could. Now that Murray has been exposed, so has Jokic. What's funny is that those really watching told you this year's ago when he only got the sixth seed without him.

To me he is the third best player in the NBA - Luka and Embiid are comfortably ahead of him. Last year he took advantage of an injured field, and a weakened conference in a transition year. He had Murray playing like a superstar and to his credit got it done. But his awards don't match his greatness and in a few years everyone will come around to what I'm saying here right now.

Take the toughness part out of this and id agree. He played 79/82 games this year. Every superstar needs a 2nd guy. Kobe need Shaq and Gasol. Peirce need KG. LBJ need Dwade and AD and Kyrie. MJ needed Pippin. So on and So on.

[shi-woo]

I think talent wise he's incredible and clearly the best in the world at the moment.

HOWEVER, it doesn't seem he has the same passion and fire other GOATs possessed. Jokic wants to do as little as possible to win, and go back to his life with horses.

Jordan, Kobe, and even LeBron wanted to stomp on your throat and kill you.

This is such a bad take. Watch the games, when Denver needs him to he steps up and does what he can. He smoked AD in the 4th all last series, putting that dude in a blender in all the big moments.

He's even trying this series, but it's hard when your #2 is going 3-18 and not getting to the line.

Again, you're talking about guys who #2 options were Shaq, Wade, Kyrie, Gasol, AD, and Pippen...

Who's 3rd options were Grant, Bynum/Odom, Bosh, and love.

How did Kobe do in 04-05 and LeBron do in 06? Teams comparable to this Nuggets team. They flamed out, and had worse success than Jokic has this year.

It's narratives and takes like this which created the superteam era, the worst in basketball where dudes just piggybacked off each other to win easy and dispel these fake narratives.

Jokic is still averaging 27/15/9 on 54% shooting...and you guys are acting like he's laying an egg these playoffs. He's trying to get his team mates involved, that's his game, they just can't hit shots right now. Which makes his game harder to play essepecially against a team that is build solely to limit his effectiveness with the DpoY roaming and dbling his on every catch

This isn't like LeBron in 2011 when he averaged 18 points in the finals...His team just isn't at that level right now, and contrary to belief you actually need your team to score points to win basketball games Speaking of LeBron, his 4 year stretch where he won 3 MVP's? He won 1 finals, choked in the 2nd round, the 3rd round, and then the biggest choke in the history of the finals. Not a good example to use.

What more do you guys want him to do? Other than leave to go team up with Luka and Giannis in MIA or LA that is

[hundreth]

I think talent wise he's incredible and clearly the best in the world at the moment.

HOWEVER, it doesn't seem he has the same passion and fire other GOATs possessed. Jokic wants to do as little as possible to win, and go back to his life with horses.

Jordan, Kobe, and even LeBron wanted to stomp on your throat and kill you.

This is such a bad take. Watch the games, when Denver needs him to he steps up and does what he can. He smoked AD in the 4th all last series, putting that dude in a blender in all the big moments.

He's even trying this series, but it's hard when your #2 is going 3-18 and not getting to the line.

Again, you're talking about guys who #2 options were Shaq, Wade, Kyrie, Gasol, AD, and Pippen...

Who's 3rd options were Grant, Bynum/Odom, Bosh, and love.

How did Kobe do in 04-05 and LeBron do in 06? Teams comparable to this Nuggets team. They flamed out, and had worse success than Jokic has this year.

It's narratives and takes like this which created the superteam era, the worst in basketball where dudes just piggybacked off each other to win easy and dispel these fake narratives.

Jokic is still averaging 27/15/9 on 54% shooting...and you guys are acting like he's laying an egg these playoffs. He's trying to get his team mates involved, that's his game, they just can't hit shots right now. Which makes his game harder to play essepecially against a team that is build solely to limit his effectiveness with the DpoY roaming and dbling his on every catch

This isn't like LeBron in 2011 when he averaged 18 points in the finals...His team just isn't at that level right now, and contrary to belief you actually need your team to score points to win basketball games Speaking of LeBron, his 4 year stretch where he won 3 MVP's? He won 1 finals, choked in the 2nd round, the 3rd round, and then the biggest choke in the history of the finals. Not a good example to use.

What more do you guys want him to do? Other than leave to go team up with Luka and Giannis in MIA or LA that is

A bit of a strawman, I'm not blaming him for the losses. Of course it's difficult when your #2 isn't playing well, that goes without saying.

All that being said, I don't see the same fire I did from other GOATs in the same situations. How many years did LeBron drag sorry teams to the Finals while having no clear #2 option? How many times did we see LeBron put up transcendent performances against the Warriors in the finals even when his team was clearly outmatched like in 2015?

How many times have we seen Jordan win games through sheer willpower?

I'm not saying Jokic is playing bad or that he's to blame for the losses, it's just that we've seen the GOATs who really care fight and claw their way to wins - and I just don't see Jokic as that guy.

[lessthanjake]

talking about impact stats here, not box stats. They’re about what happens on and off the court (while adjusting for who else is on the court at any given time), not about tallying box-score stats. Some (but not all) of them use box score and/or tracking data as a prior, but it’s just a prior (and is weighed in a way that correlates with impact). The primary thing driving these numbers is simply that if you isolate the impact on defense of having LeBron and Jokic on the court, it doesn’t look very different. Some of that is driven by the impact of things like Jokic’s great defensive rebounding, but it’s not because the stats are just weighing box score data—rather, it’d be because great defensive rebounding is impactful. Anyways, I gather that you’re not familiar with impact data. You should look them up. They’re the best we have in terms of measuring defense.

I've tried to look them up and I'm having a hard time not only finding how they are calculated but I can't even find player rankings for DRPM. Can you provide me your source for DRPM rankings/calculation; D-Lebron rankings/calculations, DRAPM rankings/calculations etc. etc.

LEBRON can be found here: https://www.bball-index.com/lebron-database/

Career DRAPM can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bg8KxzagN7D0O16EmUO9_kCyXwthEUjKywlrWPQUQt8/edit#gid=0

RPM was a stat by ESPN, but I think they no longer employ the people who did it and they have taken it down from their website. However, you can find it on the WaybackMachine, here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240118070431/http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/year/1999

As for how exactly they’re calculated, that’s incredibly complicated and not something you could in any way do by hand. I’ve given you the basic overview of what it is in multiple posts already (as have other people). Each individual measure I listed does things a little differently, and there’s not complete transparency about exactly what they do because, again, it is extremely complicated. But you can easily look up how RAPM is calculated, and for LEBRON and RPM, it is basically just RAPM with a box-score prior. If you want to know the exact details of all the calculations and the data sets and precise regression methodology used, then you’d have to get in touch with the creators of each measure.

The bottom line is that, for measuring defense, impact measures like these are the best measures we have. And they support my point, not yours.

I don’t think that’s correct at all—these are players who were praised for defense. As was Larry Hughes, as another example.

They had solid defenders. Good at best. No one was elite. Hughes wasn’t the same defender after breaking his foot.

If “no one was elite” but the entire defense as a whole was elite (which it undeniably was), then what’s your point? They had an elite defense. And that elite defense is what carried them. Whether they were elite because they had elite individual defenders or they were elite because they played incredibly well together as a defensive unit (or, more likely, a combination of the two) is largely beside the point. The fact is that LeBron’s supporting cast played amazing defense, and it was the team’s defense that carried them.

The bottom line is that that team was absolutely completely carried by its defense. They had a below-average offense in the regular season, and an awful offense in the playoffs. But they had an elite defense in the regular season, and an historically great defense in the playoffs. Their defense is very obviously what led them to the Finals. And defense is an inherently team effort and LeBron wasn’t even really a noted defender at all individually at the time. So the idea that LeBron carried that team is *extremely* dubious. He carried the load on a side of the ball that the team was genuinely bad at, while just being another cog in the wheel on the side of the ball that actually carried the team to success. There’s really a much better argument that Mike Brown carried that team, with his coaching on the defensive side of the ball.

Agree to disagree here. They don't make it to the finals if you restructure that roster around Dwight Howard or another future all-nba player.

If you put Dwight Howard on that team, then you’re probably right, since Dwight Howard wasn’t a very good offensive player, and they didn’t need Dwight Howard to have a historically good defense. I don’t think Dwight Howard would have much marginal value on that team. The bottom line is that LeBron carried the offensive load for a team that was very limited offensively, and the result was that they were…not a good offensive team at all (and genuinely bad offensively in the playoffs). Without LeBron, they’d certainly have been even worse offensively, but I think it’s certainly reasonable to think that there are plenty of other players who could’ve been put in LeBron’s place and elevated that team’s offense to be similarly bad offensively. This isn’t a very high bar! And, in terms of making the Finals, we should note that the Cavs weren’t taken to 7 games in any of those series, so there was actually even some room for someone to elevate the offense even less than LeBron did and still make the Finals (which, again, is a reflection of how historically good the defense was). Honestly, I think there’s essentially zero argument whatsoever that LeBron carried that team. It’s just completely clear that their defense carried them. If you don’t want to give credit to the players that actually played such great defense, then perhaps you should just conclude that Mike Brown hard carried that team.

[AleksandarN]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

Are you saying 3 time winners never had a bad series before? Btw Jokic has had his worse series by far in his career. But the series is not over. Still a lot of all time great had bad playoffs series. No one is perfect

[AleksandarN]

He doesn't seem like he belongs on the 3 mvp category of players.

He rightfully won but a lot of it also has to do with the field, i.e. sga too young embiid injured. Curry 2022 injured and missed end of the season mostly.
Like Kobe for example didn't win more bc the field was good, curry bc he teamed up with kd etc.


Like I love the joker but if he flames out vs the wolves, there's definitely a disconnect between him and the rest of the 3 time + winners. Maybe it won't look so off by the time he retires though. That's probably why.

LeBron won 4 MVPs before won his second championship. Kareem won *6* MVPs before he won his second championship. Still a lot of time for his team to have more post-season success.

Read on Twitter

[sp6r=underrated]

His peers who are as good as him/ Embiid/Giannis/Luka/SGA are either too young, have poor teams that have to be propped up, or have had their careers derailed do to injuries, as a result Jokic has won many of his MVPs because there isnt' anyone better to give it to.

I'm legit laughing at the argument Jokic has had better teammates than Embiid or Giannis. Even Luka is kind of silly

[NZB2323]

So I guess other all time greats never lost.

They did, and Denver hasn't lost yet. But he has won 0 series vs. a 50 win team. Here's a list (it could be expanded) of some other all time greats and how many times they won series against 50 win teams. Their teammates were largely better, but it just leaves something to be desired for a guy who's been talked about like Jokic has on here.

https://fadeawayworld.net/10-nba-stars-who-have-beaten-the-most-50-win-teams-in-playoffs-history

The Nuggets beat a 49 win Clippers team in a shortened 73 game season. A 50 win team has a 60.98 winning %. The 2020 Clippers had a 68.1 winning %. The Nuggets also beat the Utah Jazz that year who had a 61.1 winning %.

Also, look at the teammates the guys on that list had. Kobe and Shaq had each other, and Shaq played with Penny, Horace Grant, and Dwayne Wade. Kobe played with Pau Gasol. Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman played together and when Jordan and Pippen didn't have Rodman they had Horace Grant, and when Dennis Rodman didn't have Jordan and Pippen he had Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars or David Robinson. Duncan got to play with Robinson, Parker, Ginobili, and Kawhi, and Duncan won 3 of those series when he was 37 averaging 16, 9, and 2 in the playoffs. Magic got to play with Kareem and James Worthy. Lebron got to play with Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, and Anthony Davis. Curry and Durant got to play with each other and Klay and Draymond, and Durant got to play with Westbrook, Harden, Irving, and Booker.

You know who isn't on that list? Hakeem. Does that mean that Rodman and Pippen are better players than him, or did they have better teammates?

Jokic has never had a teammate make an all-star team or all-NBA team. Murray is averaging 13, 7, and 3, on 36.5 TS% against the Timberwolves. He has a PER of 11.7 throughout the playoffs, a +/- of -7.9, a VORP of 0, and a BPM of -2.4.

[Cubbies2120]

Career Accolades of Jokic's best teammate, Jamal Murray:
1) All NBA rookie second team
2) NBA Champion (courtesy Jokic)

I mean... last year's title is a GOAT carry job.