RealGM

Where would we rank him as a defensive big today?

Top 15. Great rebounder and smart at deflections. But 0 rim protection and that is hard to get at the forward positions

Not sure where I’d rank him since his strengths and weaknesses are so unique compared to other centers. One thing I will note, however, is that most traditional centers in the league are effectively defensive specialists. Relatedly, teams often play without a traditional center, because it is far better offensively. I’m inclined to think we could list a pretty good amount of these defensive-specialist centers that are better defenders than Jokic, but also that Jokic is typically going to be better defensively than the “big” when other teams aren’t running a traditional center. So I think it’s kind of just a game where there’s a bunch of teams that can have a defensive advantage at the 5 spot over Jokic, but they have to really hurt their offensive capability to do it, which ends up defeating the purpose of leveraging a defensive advantage (since the Nuggets defense will give up fewer points just by virtue of the other team having opted for a less offense-minded lineup). Meanwhile, if/when they don’t do that then Jokic probably has the defensive advantage over the “big” that is put on the floor instead, especially since he can just dominate the boards at that point.