Jokic should go down as one of the most influential players of all time.

[UcanUwill]

Has he?


Because I remember his season ended when Damian Lillard made him look foolish for being a pass-first big in the playoffs when he stole his patented outlet pass off the rebound and drilled a 3 in his face.

I don't see any team using their Centers as offensive passing hubs in the NBA.

Averaging 25, 10, 8 in your playoff year debut is foolish..haha get out of here. That's right you don't see any passing bigs because your brain can't process anything but the ball going in the hoop.

What teams use a C to generate looks, Orlando, Toronto, maybe Philadelphia.

Everybody is copying GS team build because they actually won titles. Nobody copies the losers like Mike D'Antoni's teams, or teams that lose in the second round like the Nuggets.

Bam Adebayo says hi. I think its abit of mix what OP is saying, and what NapoleonII is saying. Teams do like to expolre bigmen passing moreso nowadays.

Marc Gasol also says hi

And Pau, Odom, Vlade, Kukoc and sabonis before him. Jokic's a great passer, absolutely. But he's not exactly re-inventing the wheel by any means.

Arvydas was almost as good if not as good a passer as Jokic, but look at his numbers. he was barely getting any assists. Bigmen assists numbers definitely peaking and teams like their bigs as playmakers now. so I think OP has something.

Tho I would want to bring Joakhim Noah, he did what Jokic is doing before Jokic, he was Chicago's main playmaker for a while and very important offensive player despite the fact he was terrible scorer. He was the first center who hated posting down low, but liked to explore and playmake in high post.

[UcanUwill]

brad miller/anthony mason were great passing bigs.

OP is not saying that only now bigs became good passers. He says only now teams started to take full advantage of bigmen passing, and its true, whenever you think it was Jokic influence or not, is beside the point. 15-20 years ago 3 assists from a big seemed like an absolute max you can get, even from players who were insane passers, like Sabonis. But look at numbers right now, a lot of bigs averaging over 3 assists easily without a problem.

Jokic 7 assists, Bam 5 assists, Domantas 5 assists, KAT 4.5 assists etc.

[Ron Swanson]

I mean, this is absolutely nothing new. Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain would like a word with this idea that "big men are only now racking up assists as they become the passing hubs of offenses". Hell, you could argue that Draymond was "re-inventing" the position more as a quintessential small-ball 5 before Jokic was even drafted. The difference is that Jokic is simply really really damn good at it.

[Sgt Major]

Exactly what Ron Swanson said. Jokic didn't bring anything new, he's just doing it exceptionally well.

Read on Twitter

[nomansland]

Honestly, its an insult to even compare Jokic to Curry as a player, let alone in influence to this league.

Jokic is great and all but come on, he hasn't influenced or revolutionized a thing. Teams are still looking for the next Curry, trying to emulate the Warriors. No one is trying to emulate the Nuggets.

If Jokic gets in really good shape though he's probably a true legit MVP candidate more than a darkhorse one.

You haven't seen him since the bubble started, have you?

[Leslie Forman]

Passing centers is not a new thing, but Jokic is essentially a point center. That is kind of a new thing. No, not some small ball stuff, or a big guy just standing out there looking for open guys, we are legitimately seeing a full-time, full-sized center out at the three-point line handling the ball in most of the team's offensive sets. People saying this is nothing new are being a bit disingenuous.

So it absolutely is something different from what previous "passing" centers did, except for…

Tho I would want to bring Joakhim Noah, he did what Jokic is doing before Jokic, he was Chicago's main playmaker for a while and very important offensive player despite the fact he was terrible scorer. He was the first center who hated posting down low, but liked to explore and playmake in high post.

…Joakim Noah, who actually did it quite a bit once Rose went out. It was an ingenious way to keep him involved in an offense but getting him away from the paint, where he was just useless. But the ceiling on this idea was really low, since he was such a non-scoring threat. So often times, he did end up just being the "big guy looking for open guys," since he was so anti-scoring. So still not quite Jokic.

With the entire league going towards a 5 out offense now, and big men growing up playing out on the perimeter more, I do think we will see more in the future, but one on the level of Jokic may not come around for a long time. Legit 6'11"+, almost 300 pound guys that can both dribble and pass like him are always going to be unicorns.

The next step is an athletic Jokic, a guy crossing people up at the 3, actually being a straight up 7-foot Nash/Paul. A guy that gets the picks, rather than sets them (Jokic still is more of the pick setter). It'd have to be a guy who's like a Jokic/Giannis combination. Now that guy is going to absolutely tear the league apart.

[Wigginstime]

Jokic is amazing but i couldn't call him influential. To be "Influential" you have to do something that can be replicated. Calling Jokic influential would be no different than calling Shaq influential. After all everyone should go and find a Shaq like 7'3" center with explosive speed and power.

There isn't exactly a plethora of seven footers with Jokic like vision, passing, and shooting.

[Raps in 4]

Mobile bigs were a thing long before Jokic, as were passing bigs.

I think he's the best C in the league right now, and a clear-cut top-10 player, but I wouldn't put him anywhere near Steph in terms of impact on the game.

[BelgradeNugget]

I mean, this is absolutely nothing new. Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain would like a word with this idea that "big men are only now racking up assists as they become the passing hubs of offenses". Hell, you could argue that Draymond was "re-inventing" the position more as a quintessential small-ball 5 before Jokic was even drafted. The difference is that Jokic is simply really really damn good at it.

Well, I agree with you, but I think the OP is also right. People who revolutionize something are usually not ones who first start to do it but the ones who do it so well that people try to copy what they are doing. Curry was not a first scoring/shooting PG. Abdul Rauf was similar in style only worst in productions. But Curry showed that you could be a great player whit that style of play, so now we have Dame, Tray... Now nobody is asking for your PG to be like Kidd or Stokton, everybody must be able to shoot like Steph. And people speak of Simmons like he is trash when he is closest to Kidd or Magic that we have today.
In that sense, Jokic is maybe starting a revolution. There were bigs in the history of the league who were good passers but I think that we never had so many bigs with so many assists per game. Now with Jokic, you have Bam, Sabonis, Kat, Vuc, and trend is that bigs have more ball in their hands to create something from the high post. In the time when Noah was doing it, it was an anomaly, now it is a trend. Listen to Ayton
https://streamable.com/y1pza
Here are Steven Adams best passes this season in very similar sets as the way Jokic is doing it for Nuggets. Adams was averaging less then 1 assist per game in his first 3 seasons now he is averaging 2.4

Watch on YouTube

[Alatan]

I have also noticed that other teams are allowing their centers to playmake more than they did before. I would not say that Jokic reinvented the game but he sure promoted the play style.

[CraftylikeaFox]

Curry was/is so influential that he turned the center position into one where centers need to play like Jokic to be considered franchise players. Before, a center could get 20 points off post moves and free throws to go along with 10 rebounds a night and that alone would get them to franchise player status. Now if you are a center who can't at least pass or shoot at a very high level you aren't really worth investing in. All of that is because of Curry.

That said, Jokic is the new gold standard for an A+ center that you can actually build around, and is probably going to be more rare to see going forward than seeing someone replicate what Curry is doing. You may only see one Jokic-type player per generation compared to two or three Steph Curry's.

[cupcakesnake]

I don't see much comparison between Jokic and the great passing centers that came before. Either Gasol, either Sabonis, Joakim, Webber, Miller, Divac, Wilt... all these guys for sure could pass but nowhere near Jokic's level. Joker has an insane passing arsenal, both in both static and off the dribble situations.

In terms of what OP is saying about his potential influence, you definitely do see more teams experimenting with skilled bigs as passers from more spots on the floor. Bam and Sabonis are good examples, Vucevic, Towns, Nurk. Some centers who have never been known as passers have started taking expanding their games with dribble handoffs (Valanciunas, Adams, Deandre and Drummond) when the team doesn't have a scoring power forward in that high post area. If you're a pick & roll center, you can expand your role in this way, we've seen Theis, Poetl and Ayton doing a bit more of this too.

[boomershadow]

While passing centers definitely aren't a new thing, there really is something about the eye test when you watch Jokic play that just looks different from other facilitating centers. I'm not sure I can describe it with assist numbers or usage rate or whatever. Guys like Noah, Gasol, and younger Sabonis, are all great passers and facilitators and deserve tons of credit, but when I watch Jokic I swear I'm seeing a 7 foot tall John Stockton or Mark Jackson type running an offense like an old school point guard, and it's just a slightly different thing than those other distributing centers.

It definitely doesnt take away from what others have done, but it looks different. It feels different.

[JayMKE]

Jokic is great but I don't think he's really influenced the way the league has been played, certainly not anywhere close to Curry.

[Curmudgeon]

Maybe Jokic should get to at least one conference finals first.