Jokic leads in:
Player Impact Estimate (NBA.com)
Estimated Plus Minus: (DunksandThrees.com)
FIC: (Real GM.com)
WPA: (Inpredictable.com)
BPM: (BBRef)
RAPTOR/RAPTOR WAR: (Fivethirtyeight.com)
PER: (BBRef)
OWS: (BBRef)
WS: (BBRef)
OBPM: (BBRef)
DBPM: (BBRef)
BPM: (BBRef)
VORP: (BBRef)
On/Off: (BBRef) 2nd to KCP (+20.9)
He has the highest True Shooting percentage of anyone in NBA History with 15+ FGA/G this season.
Highest eFG% of anyone in NBA History (with 15+ FGA/G) this season.
Most assists per game by a Center in NBA History this season.
Inflation Adjusted Per 75 Stats (Backpicks)
-25.1 PTS (95th percentile)
-+12.2 rTS% (98th percentile)
-+10.0 Passer Rating (100th percentile)
-+24.2 Net On/Off (99th percentile)
-+10.0 Augmented Plus Minus (100th percentile)
-+8.4 Regularized Plus Minus (99th percentile)
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/1/16/23556482/nba-awards-nikola-jokic-mvpRelated to those figures, what about value? There’s a 20.9-point difference per 100 possessions when you look at how good the Nuggets are with Jokic on the floor versus how sorry they’ve been with him off it. That’s the second-largest gap in the league. (Two seasons ago, when he won his first MVP, the net difference was around a third of what it is now.)
The Nuggets register a plus-11.3 net rating with Jokic. The closest All-Stars to Jokic’s number are Joel Embiid and Jayson Tatum, at 8.8 and 9.1, respectively. Denver also has the best offense in the NBA, which is nice. Dig deeper. Their attack is the most efficient in league history with Jokic (123.4 points per 100 possessions) and significantly worse than the intentionally terrible Rockets (more on them later) when he sits.
All condensed into plain English: Cleaning the Glass has a stat called “expected wins,” which estimates how many wins every player’s team would log considering their point differential. The Nuggets are a 67-win team with Jokic on the court and an 18-win team without him. Nobody else touches that 49-win gap. If all this keeps up, Jokic deserves to join Bill Russell, Larry Bird, and Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to win its most prestigious individual award three straight times.When he’s on the court, Denver has a top-10 defense. He functions in a scheme that frequently asks him to stay high with the ball handler in a pick-and-roll and then recover back to his original assignment after, ideally, Denver’s low man rotates over to provide cover. It’s a lot of work and forces constant rotation and movement, sometimes leaving Denver vulnerable from the corners. But when executed properly by everyone involved, with hard closeouts and coordinated x-outs on the weakside, it works.
According to Second Spectrum, the Nuggets allow 0.85 points per chance when Jokic is up to touch against a pick-and-roll. That’s 16th best out of 72 players who’ve defended at least 50 actions in that coverage. The Nuggets also allow 0.97 points per direct play when Jokic drops. That number is better than Brook Lopez and Myles Turner. This isn’t to suggest Jokic is better or close to as effective as those two defensively, and so much goes into those numbers that can’t be quantified (such as the many times Jokic has kicked a pocket pass out of bounds). But the point here is that he’s not a sieve. He’s not even a liability. Narratives die hard, though, especially false ones.
