Jokic GOAT Peak?

[Peregrine01]

We have a lot of scientists and researchers in here, apparently.

Wait, nvm. Real scientists actually acknowledge that the data they ACCURATELY assess with the scientific method is often inconclusive and "requires further analysis"when contemplating conclusion.

They should consult with RealGM's stat people, they're obviously smarter.

The dialogue these last few pages is embarrassing

Why even watch the game when you have RAPM?

[PooledSilver]

We have a lot of scientists and researchers in here, apparently.

Wait, nvm. Real scientists actually acknowledge that the data they ACCURATELY assess with the scientific method is often inconclusive and "requires further analysis"when contemplating conclusion.

They should consult with RealGM's stat people, they're obviously smarter.

The dialogue these last few pages is embarrassing

Why even watch the game when you have RAPM?

So apparently neither of you can read. Scientists and researchers when talking about running a block of code is very funny, if you don’t understand something then say that!

I have said multiple times I don’t care much about RAPM in general on here, I was pushing back against the statement that Jokic’s RAPM was goat tier because it isn’t

I do not care that much about RAPM, I know how to run it and everything but I’m much more into Xs and Os personally, but if someone is going to use it as the crux of their argument I will explain that in this context it doesn’t support their conclusion. If either of you have a substantial point to make, then maybe make it instead of complaining because neither of you understand it or can follow a conversation

[Peregrine01]

We have a lot of scientists and researchers in here, apparently.

Wait, nvm. Real scientists actually acknowledge that the data they ACCURATELY assess with the scientific method is often inconclusive and "requires further analysis"when contemplating conclusion.

They should consult with RealGM's stat people, they're obviously smarter.

The dialogue these last few pages is embarrassing

Why even watch the game when you have RAPM?

So apparently neither of you can read. Scientists and researchers when talking about running a block of code is very funny, if you don’t understand something then say that!

I have said multiple times I don’t care much about RAPM in general on here, I was pushing back against the statement that Jokic’s RAPM was goat tier because it isn’t

I do not care that much about RAPM, I know how to run it and everything but I’m much more into Xs and Os personally, but if someone is going to use it as the crux of their argument I will explain that in this context it doesn’t support their conclusion. If either of you have a substantial point to make, then maybe make it instead of complaining because neither of you understand it or can follow a conversation

I admit that I didn’t read the block of text of the last few pages so please forgive me. I was agreeing with the broader point of how obnoxiously sure of themselves the statisticians can be.

[OhayoKD]

Wait, nvm. Real scientists actually acknowledge that the data they ACCURATELY assess with the scientific method is often inconclusive and "requires further analysis"when contemplating conclusion.

No one here has used the word "conclusive". Real scientists read i think.

[PooledSilver]

Why even watch the game when you have RAPM?

So apparently neither of you can read. Scientists and researchers when talking about running a block of code is very funny, if you don’t understand something then say that!

I have said multiple times I don’t care much about RAPM in general on here, I was pushing back against the statement that Jokic’s RAPM was goat tier because it isn’t

I do not care that much about RAPM, I know how to run it and everything but I’m much more into Xs and Os personally, but if someone is going to use it as the crux of their argument I will explain that in this context it doesn’t support their conclusion. If either of you have a substantial point to make, then maybe make it instead of complaining because neither of you understand it or can follow a conversation

I admit that I didn’t read the block of text of the last few pages so please forgive me. I was agreeing with the broader point of how obnoxiously sure of themselves the statisticians can be.

alot of basketball data people can’t analyze basketball without a spreadsheet, it’s very nasty

Data is a good way to find something to look into but if you can’t see it on film either you aren’t seeing something and ur eye test sucks or ur data sux (or in a more polite way isn’t a good representation of reality)

The best kind of data is frequency data for how often things happen, high post help vs baseline post help and the shots you take in those situations, getting blown by (pause), all of that is more practical than most fancy models that often aren’t that good at saying how good someone is, even as someone that plays around with that coding stuff data inherently misses a ton of things on the court even ones that literally use cameras


People use data to shape their opinions instead of using it to look more into their current ones, makes discussion suck

[Ambrose]

Data is valuable but shouldn't be a crutch.

There is no amount of data on Earth that will ever convince me Chris Paul is anywhere near Jokic as a player.

[Heej]

I'm seeing takes on the GB now along the lines of Jokic having the best peak ever and clearly being better than LeBron overall. Interested to see what PC Board thinks. Imo it seems Jokic is also in a very ideal situation with arguably the best coaching staff in the league (David Adelman is widely considered the best offensive assistant coach in basketball) and a really well put together supporting cast. As far as eye test goes he looks like a bigger Larry Bird to me imo which is certainly GOAT-esque.

P.S. I find it very neat that David Adelman's dad is Rick Adelman who is arguably the 2nd most influential offensive coach in NBA history after Mike D'Antoni due to aspects of Adelman's corner offense being found in every NBA playbook today. Seems genius level spatial reasoning runs in the family

So my own take I'll ground with this:

Whenever we next see a guy own an era for an extended period of time, he'll probably be the GOAT Peak so long as you aren't looking to adjust for era. We're still in the midst of a paradigm shift that has propelled the level of play in the NBA more dramatically than anything in basketball history other than the coming of the big man, so next time someone achieves this type of dominance, he'll probably be a better representation of how to be the best possible basketball player on a court with a 3-point line than we've ever seen before.

And yeah, Jokic might be that guy, but we'll see what happens.

What I think is clear is that Jokic has basically an optimal basketball brain, and an advantage there compared to all contemporaries, so it's mostly a question of how his physical limitations can be used against him. That first chip says great things, but now all guns will be trained on him come playoff time like never before, so we'll see what happens.

Re: best coaching staff in the league. Well, I think the thing they deserve the most credit for is recognizing what they have in Jokic, and learning to coach a team to optimally play around him when they've literally never done that before in their career. This isn't to knock Malone and his sideline team, but they didn't "make" Jokic the way, say, Kawhi or Giannis were developed by their respective teams.

Re: Bigger Bird. I think if Bird had Jokic's body and played in an era where there were so many adept 3-point shooters, but still developed his own innovative style from a young age, we might see him play exactly like Jokic. But while Jokic's size gives advantages, it also takes away. Jokic has never had the he's-everywhere factor that young Bird had.

Re: Adelman arguably 2nd most influential offensive coach in NBA history. That's be a fun conversation to have! but I think it's really hard to be confident about who deserves credit for innovations from the further past. For example, the Minneapolis Lakers developed a play called "J & G" in the 1940s to make use of the talents of their two stars (Jim Pollard & George Mikan) that is acknowledged to be a form of pick & roll, but back then the term either didn't exist, or were not widely known. So it's possible that the Lakers invented the pick & roll which is one of the most important innovations in modern basketball history...but I kinda doubt they were the first to do it, so how do you meaningfully allocate credit of influence for these sort of things?

When people say that he has an "optimal" basketball team around him, what do they mean exactly? Isn't every team seeking the same configurations? Long wings and 3 and D guys?

It anything, the great thing about Jokic is that he can morph in ways that optimizes the play of the rest of his team. The Nuggets have staggered their rotations more than they've ever had this year and he still leads the league in on/off. Whether you put him in with the starters or the offensively-challenged bench, he still manages to churn out a top-3 plus minus. So are the Nuggets really optimized around Jokic or is it Jokic optimizing the Nuggets?

As in all things in life it's a little bit of both. Jokic is one or the greatest players this game has ever seen and the Nuggets have been one of the best organizations in the league for the past decade, ever since the Masai Ujiri days.

[EmpireFalls]

Jokic vs. Curry 1 year peak? 3 year peak?

I don't love doing cross-positional individual peak comparisons but considering these are almost overlapping in the current era, both have a heavy offensive bias, and both led to MVPs and championships, it's a fair question.

[HeartBreakKid]

Data is valuable but shouldn't be a crutch.

There is no amount of data on Earth that will ever convince me Chris Paul is anywhere near Jokic as a player.

No amount of data on earth? So if there was as much evidence as CP3 = Jokic as there is the earth not being flat, you still wouldn't believe it?

[PooledSilver]

Data is valuable but shouldn't be a crutch.

There is no amount of data on Earth that will ever convince me Chris Paul is anywhere near Jokic as a player.

No amount of data on earth? So if there was as much evidence as CP3 = Jokic as there is the earth not being flat, you still wouldn't believe it?

The difference is thinking Cp3 is as good as Jokic is being as crazy as a flat earther

Thinking cp3 is equal to Jokic because of RAPM would be a very funny and very dumb take

[PooledSilver]

So my own take I'll ground with this:

Whenever we next see a guy own an era for an extended period of time, he'll probably be the GOAT Peak so long as you aren't looking to adjust for era. We're still in the midst of a paradigm shift that has propelled the level of play in the NBA more dramatically than anything in basketball history other than the coming of the big man, so next time someone achieves this type of dominance, he'll probably be a better representation of how to be the best possible basketball player on a court with a 3-point line than we've ever seen before.

And yeah, Jokic might be that guy, but we'll see what happens.

What I think is clear is that Jokic has basically an optimal basketball brain, and an advantage there compared to all contemporaries, so it's mostly a question of how his physical limitations can be used against him. That first chip says great things, but now all guns will be trained on him come playoff time like never before, so we'll see what happens.

Re: best coaching staff in the league. Well, I think the thing they deserve the most credit for is recognizing what they have in Jokic, and learning to coach a team to optimally play around him when they've literally never done that before in their career. This isn't to knock Malone and his sideline team, but they didn't "make" Jokic the way, say, Kawhi or Giannis were developed by their respective teams.

Re: Bigger Bird. I think if Bird had Jokic's body and played in an era where there were so many adept 3-point shooters, but still developed his own innovative style from a young age, we might see him play exactly like Jokic. But while Jokic's size gives advantages, it also takes away. Jokic has never had the he's-everywhere factor that young Bird had.

Re: Adelman arguably 2nd most influential offensive coach in NBA history. That's be a fun conversation to have! but I think it's really hard to be confident about who deserves credit for innovations from the further past. For example, the Minneapolis Lakers developed a play called "J & G" in the 1940s to make use of the talents of their two stars (Jim Pollard & George Mikan) that is acknowledged to be a form of pick & roll, but back then the term either didn't exist, or were not widely known. So it's possible that the Lakers invented the pick & roll which is one of the most important innovations in modern basketball history...but I kinda doubt they were the first to do it, so how do you meaningfully allocate credit of influence for these sort of things?

When people say that he has an "optimal" basketball team around him, what do they mean exactly? Isn't every team seeking the same configurations? Long wings and 3 and D guys?

It anything, the great thing about Jokic is that he can morph in ways that optimizes the play of the rest of his team. The Nuggets have staggered their rotations more than they've ever had this year and he still leads the league in on/off. Whether you put him in with the starters or the offensively-challenged bench, he still manages to churn out a top-3 plus minus. So are the Nuggets really optimized around Jokic or is it Jokic optimizing the Nuggets?

As in all things in life it's a little bit of both. Jokic is one or the greatest players this game has ever seen and the Nuggets have been one of the best organizations in the league for the past decade, ever since the Masai Ujiri days.

Pretty much

Jokic makes the nuggets work because they’ve built a good team around him.

The Jokic and Murray pick and roll works so well because Murray is really good at stringing out those soft hedges and turning them into switches and those aren’t two guys you can switch like in comparison to the bron + AD pick and roll

Meanwhile Jokic is everything you need in a perfect roller aside from being a lob threat essentially

Beyond that, shooters + cutters is all you need for a post offense since the counters to post help involve specific cuts/flashes, spacing out, etc.

It’s a complement to Jokic that an offense built around him well like this is a ridiculously hard one to stop once the chips are down and they hit their money actions once it gets close, at the same time you can give credit to denver for building a team around him that fits because obviously if you put him on the pistons they’re offense isn’t gonna suddenly be elite lol. It’s similar to almost any player ever

Jokic being the best offensive player of this century (not named lebron lol) isn’t inconsistent with, they built a good team that plays well around him

[OhayoKD]

Data is valuable but shouldn't be a crutch.

There is no amount of data on Earth that will ever convince me Chris Paul is anywhere near Jokic as a player.

No amount of data on earth? So if there was as much evidence as CP3 = Jokic as there is the earth not being flat, you still wouldn't believe it?

The difference is thinking Cp3 is as good as Jokic is being as crazy as a flat earther

Thinking cp3 is equal to Jokic because of RAPM would be a very funny and very dumb take

This is why real-world signals also matter lol

[HeartBreakKid]

Data is valuable but shouldn't be a crutch.

There is no amount of data on Earth that will ever convince me Chris Paul is anywhere near Jokic as a player.

No amount of data on earth? So if there was as much evidence as CP3 = Jokic as there is the earth not being flat, you still wouldn't believe it?

The difference is thinking Cp3 is as good as Jokic is being as crazy as a flat earther

Thinking cp3 is equal to Jokic because of RAPM would be a very funny and very dumb take

Saying someone is better than another player "just cause" is the actual dumb take - and that would be your reason if you did go by the "no amount of data on earth blah blah" thing.


RAPM is not "no amount of data on earth"



Not changing your mind about something regardless of facts is stupid, and is the reason why there are so many stupid opinions in basketball - and in everything outside of basketball. Flat earther example ^.


If you want to say that just because someone has high RAPM that does not mean they are superior to another player then say that. No reason to make a blanket statement about data or stats. Or make really ridiculous strawman arguments about people not watching basketball (not saying you said all of this, but seems like you are in agreement).

[PooledSilver]

No amount of data on earth? So if there was as much evidence as CP3 = Jokic as there is the earth not being flat, you still wouldn't believe it?

The difference is thinking Cp3 is as good as Jokic is being as crazy as a flat earther

Thinking cp3 is equal to Jokic because of RAPM would be a very funny and very dumb take

Saying someone is better than another player "just cause" is the actual dumb take - and that would be your reason if you did go by the "no amount of data on earth blah blah" thing.


RAPM is not "no amount of data on earth"



Not changing your mind about something regardless of facts is stupid, and is the reason why there are so many stupid opinions in basketball - and in everything outside of basketball. Flat earther example ^.


If you want to say that just because someone has high RAPM that does not mean they are superior to another player then say that. No reason to make a blanket statement about data or stats. Or make really ridiculous strawman arguments about people not watching basketball (not saying you said all of this, but seems like you are in agreement).

If there was a fictional super stat that actually 100% accurately player X is better than player Y without any sort of possible argument against it then sure but coming up with useless hypotheticals about an obviously false statement sounds a bit silly

It’s as meaningful as me saying “what if undeniable proof showed the earth is actually flat” anyone who isn’t the youngest child of the beifong family knows Chris Paul isn’t better than Jokic and that it’s a completely unserious conversation just like the earth being flat, so getting hung up on someone basically saying if ur data says Chris Paul is better than ur data is stupid is some strange behavior

[Ambrose]

Data is valuable but shouldn't be a crutch.

There is no amount of data on Earth that will ever convince me Chris Paul is anywhere near Jokic as a player.

No amount of data on earth? So if there was as much evidence as CP3 = Jokic as there is the earth not being flat, you still wouldn't believe it?

The difference is thinking Cp3 is as good as Jokic is being as crazy as a flat earther

Thinking cp3 is equal to Jokic because of RAPM would be a very funny and very dumb take

Basically this.

[LukaTheGOAT]

^ why are you bringing up the career RAPM results that J.E cautioned that didn’t adjust for the rubber band effect, age, and “coaches?” and bringing up “non prime years” which absolutely is going to hurt players who finished their careers more + Lebron being out of his “impact peak” for years now

It feels disingenuous to talk about Jokic’s results being so impressive despite him being early in his career, his career RAPM is high BECAUSE of those early years being far better most players early years or especially post prime washed years. If you go by ranks for example, per shotcharts (which has issues but is way better than the other sites don’t get me wrong) 3 of his “top 5” rapm years were years 1-3.



He already posted an updated RAPM career sheet adjusting for these things. The rankings were (top 12 cuz that’s where KD is)

Lebron - 10.8
Garnett - 9.5
CP3 - 9.4
Stockton - 9.2
Curry - 8.5
Ginobli - 8.5
Jokic - 8.5
Dirk - 8.4
Duncan - 8.2
Kawhi - 7.7
Shaq - 7.3
KD - 7.2

J.E already posted an updated numbers on Twitter. The coaching adjustment can be a bit weird and age adjustments are a bit weird with bron specifically but it’s pretty much the exact same results as you would expect

As I said above, an age adjustment obviously favors LeBron here, and it does go to career value and whatnot. Jokic is highly unlikely to have a superior career to LeBron—who was better at a young age than Jokic and virtually certainly will be better at an old age than Jokic. But this thread isn’t about that. I’m also not a fan of a “coaching adjustment” and I think neither are most people here, but that’s a rabbit hole not worth going down. Ultimately, one can always layer on different adjustments and box score components and whatnot and get to fairly different numbers or rankings. We see that all the time, with different impact measures saying different things in the same season. We also see that pretty clearly with JE’s numbers, where the addition of certain adjustments changed the rankings. I’m not positing that Jokic will be #1 in all versions of impact data. He wouldn’t (nor would anyone else). But the fact that he was #1 in the pre-controversial-adjustments version of JE’s 1997-2024 data certainly suggests that Jokic’s impact numbers are up there in GOAT-tier territory, rather than that he “has no impact case” and gets “clobbered” by other players, as was suggested. That is the point I’m making. Impact measures are inherently flawed and can be massaged a lot of different ways, such that we should take them with a real grain of salt, but if a guy shakes out as well in them as Jokic does, then he does have an “impact case,” even if he’s not the only one with an impact case. And beyond that, he does also have a box score data case too. And, for me, both of those things just validate the fact that my eye test tells me he’s the best player I’ve ever seen.

I mean Jokic's per-possession impact by RAPM was greater than Lebron's the first 3 years I would argue, so I don't get the idea that his age-adjusting hurts him.

Jokic's NBA Shot Charts LA RAPM rankings.

Rookie Year (Age 20): 7th
Sophomore Year: 12th
Third Year: 6th


Lebron's PI Englemann RAPM ranking

Rookie Year (Age 19): 112th
Sophomore Year: 24th
Third Year: 21st

If we look at Intraocular APM

Jokic

Rookie Year: +3
Sophomore Year: +5.7
Third Year: +3.9

Lebron

Rookie Year: +0.1
Sophomore Year: +2.5
Third Year: +4.6

Also in multi-year RAPM

-NBAShot Charts 3-Year RAPM (15-18), Jokic ranked #7.

-NBA Shot Charts Luck Adjusted 3-Year RAPM (15-18), Jokic ranked #4.

By DARKO, Jokic had a stronger star earlier in his career

Read on Twitter

Jokic looks better than Lebron in very early career RAPM, so I am not sure if I am buying that Jokic's RAPM would be suppressed against Lebron. Jokic came out the strong with a historically GOATed rookie profile for someone of his age, that I think a lot of people slept on due to draft position, etc.

[Peregrine01]

^ why are you bringing up the career RAPM results that J.E cautioned that didn’t adjust for the rubber band effect, age, and “coaches?” and bringing up “non prime years” which absolutely is going to hurt players who finished their careers more + Lebron being out of his “impact peak” for years now

It feels disingenuous to talk about Jokic’s results being so impressive despite him being early in his career, his career RAPM is high BECAUSE of those early years being far better most players early years or especially post prime washed years. If you go by ranks for example, per shotcharts (which has issues but is way better than the other sites don’t get me wrong) 3 of his “top 5” rapm years were years 1-3.



He already posted an updated RAPM career sheet adjusting for these things. The rankings were (top 12 cuz that’s where KD is)

Lebron - 10.8
Garnett - 9.5
CP3 - 9.4
Stockton - 9.2
Curry - 8.5
Ginobli - 8.5
Jokic - 8.5
Dirk - 8.4
Duncan - 8.2
Kawhi - 7.7
Shaq - 7.3
KD - 7.2

J.E already posted an updated numbers on Twitter. The coaching adjustment can be a bit weird and age adjustments are a bit weird with bron specifically but it’s pretty much the exact same results as you would expect

As I said above, an age adjustment obviously favors LeBron here, and it does go to career value and whatnot. Jokic is highly unlikely to have a superior career to LeBron—who was better at a young age than Jokic and virtually certainly will be better at an old age than Jokic. But this thread isn’t about that. I’m also not a fan of a “coaching adjustment” and I think neither are most people here, but that’s a rabbit hole not worth going down. Ultimately, one can always layer on different adjustments and box score components and whatnot and get to fairly different numbers or rankings. We see that all the time, with different impact measures saying different things in the same season. We also see that pretty clearly with JE’s numbers, where the addition of certain adjustments changed the rankings. I’m not positing that Jokic will be #1 in all versions of impact data. He wouldn’t (nor would anyone else). But the fact that he was #1 in the pre-controversial-adjustments version of JE’s 1997-2024 data certainly suggests that Jokic’s impact numbers are up there in GOAT-tier territory, rather than that he “has no impact case” and gets “clobbered” by other players, as was suggested. That is the point I’m making. Impact measures are inherently flawed and can be massaged a lot of different ways, such that we should take them with a real grain of salt, but if a guy shakes out as well in them as Jokic does, then he does have an “impact case,” even if he’s not the only one with an impact case. And beyond that, he does also have a box score data case too. And, for me, both of those things just validate the fact that my eye test tells me he’s the best player I’ve ever seen.

I mean Jokic's per-possession impact by RAPM was greater than Lebron's the first 3 years I would argue, so I don't get the idea that his age-adjusting hurts him.

Jokic's NBA Shot Charts LA RAPM rankings.

Rookie Year (Age 20): 7th
Sophomore Year: 12th
Third Year: 6th


Lebron's PI Englemann RAPM ranking

Rookie Year (Age 19): 112th
Sophomore Year: 24th
Third Year: 21st

If we look at Intraocular APM

Jokic

Rookie Year: +3
Sophomore Year: +5.7
Third Year: +3.9

Lebron

Rookie Year: +0.1
Sophomore Year: +2.5
Third Year: +4.6

By DARKO, Jokic had a stronger star earlier in his career

Read on Twitter

Jokic looks better than Lebron in very early career RAPM, so I am not sure if I am buying that Jokic's RAPM would be suppressed against Lebron. Jokic came out the strong with a historically GOATed rookie profile for someone of his age, that I think a lot of people slept on due to draft position, etc.

Surprised by this. And to think that he got benched half a season for Nurkic. Not only did the Nuggets not know what they had but I don't think he did either. A savant hiding in plain sight.

[lessthanjake]

^ why are you bringing up the career RAPM results that J.E cautioned that didn’t adjust for the rubber band effect, age, and “coaches?” and bringing up “non prime years” which absolutely is going to hurt players who finished their careers more + Lebron being out of his “impact peak” for years now

It feels disingenuous to talk about Jokic’s results being so impressive despite him being early in his career, his career RAPM is high BECAUSE of those early years being far better most players early years or especially post prime washed years. If you go by ranks for example, per shotcharts (which has issues but is way better than the other sites don’t get me wrong) 3 of his “top 5” rapm years were years 1-3.



He already posted an updated RAPM career sheet adjusting for these things. The rankings were (top 12 cuz that’s where KD is)

Lebron - 10.8
Garnett - 9.5
CP3 - 9.4
Stockton - 9.2
Curry - 8.5
Ginobli - 8.5
Jokic - 8.5
Dirk - 8.4
Duncan - 8.2
Kawhi - 7.7
Shaq - 7.3
KD - 7.2

J.E already posted an updated numbers on Twitter. The coaching adjustment can be a bit weird and age adjustments are a bit weird with bron specifically but it’s pretty much the exact same results as you would expect

As I said above, an age adjustment obviously favors LeBron here, and it does go to career value and whatnot. Jokic is highly unlikely to have a superior career to LeBron—who was better at a young age than Jokic and virtually certainly will be better at an old age than Jokic. But this thread isn’t about that. I’m also not a fan of a “coaching adjustment” and I think neither are most people here, but that’s a rabbit hole not worth going down. Ultimately, one can always layer on different adjustments and box score components and whatnot and get to fairly different numbers or rankings. We see that all the time, with different impact measures saying different things in the same season. We also see that pretty clearly with JE’s numbers, where the addition of certain adjustments changed the rankings. I’m not positing that Jokic will be #1 in all versions of impact data. He wouldn’t (nor would anyone else). But the fact that he was #1 in the pre-controversial-adjustments version of JE’s 1997-2024 data certainly suggests that Jokic’s impact numbers are up there in GOAT-tier territory, rather than that he “has no impact case” and gets “clobbered” by other players, as was suggested. That is the point I’m making. Impact measures are inherently flawed and can be massaged a lot of different ways, such that we should take them with a real grain of salt, but if a guy shakes out as well in them as Jokic does, then he does have an “impact case,” even if he’s not the only one with an impact case. And beyond that, he does also have a box score data case too. And, for me, both of those things just validate the fact that my eye test tells me he’s the best player I’ve ever seen.

I mean Jokic's per-possession impact by RAPM was greater than Lebron's the first 3 years I would argue, so I don't get the idea that his age-adjusting hurts him.

Jokic's NBA Shot Charts LA RAPM rankings.

Rookie Year (Age 20): 7th
Sophomore Year: 12th
Third Year: 6th


Lebron's PI Englemann RAPM ranking

Rookie Year (Age 19): 112th
Sophomore Year: 24th
Third Year: 21st

If we look at Intraocular APM

Jokic

Rookie Year: +3
Sophomore Year: +5.7
Third Year: +3.9

Lebron

Rookie Year: +0.1
Sophomore Year: +2.5
Third Year: +4.6

Also in multi-year RAPM

-NBAShot Charts 3-Year RAPM (15-18), Jokic ranked #7.

-NBA Shot Charts Luck Adjusted 3-Year RAPM (15-18), Jokic ranked #4.

By DARKO, Jokic had a stronger star earlier in his career

Read on Twitter

Jokic looks better than Lebron in very early career RAPM, so I am not sure if I am buying that Jokic's RAPM would be suppressed against Lebron. Jokic came out the strong with a historically GOATed rookie profile for someone of his age, that I think a lot of people slept on due to draft position, etc.

Yeah, that’s all true and quite interesting! And it is consistent with things I acknowledged in a couple posts I made in response to a similar point. But it is nevertheless also true that Jokic’s impact in his true prime was still a good deal higher than it was in those years and that his true prime years make up an abnormally low percent of his career thus far (not to mention that the impact numbers in his weak-prime years actually went down and don’t help him). It can actually be simultaneously true that Jokic’s impact in his not-at-all prime years was superior to LeBron’s impact in LeBron’s not-at-all prime years, while still being true that taking a career-wide measure isn’t actually particularly helpful to Jokic, because these guys had their best impact in their true prime and LeBron’s true prime is a substantially larger percent of his career.

Either way, though, I’d direct you to the second paragraph of the first post I made that responded to this sort of point (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=111820519#p111820519) for some broader discussion of what this all means for purposes of this topic and clarifying what I’m saying. Basically, it’s of course true that someone with higher career-wide RAPM doesn’t necessarily have better peak RAPM (and peak is the relevant thing in this thread), even if that person has a prime that makes up a smaller portion of the data set. I’m not saying it does—since obviously the factors we are discussing above are complicating factors that can prevent us from drawing that type of quick/automatic conclusion. But I think we should acknowledge that impact measures like RAPM are really not a precise science, and we should conceptualize them as something with a confidence interval. And to me, if we are looking at someone who is #1 in a career RAPM measure, and has also looked amazing overall in season-by-season impact measures in his best years, I find it pretty easy to conclude that I think he’d be within the confidence interval of GOAT peak in terms of impact measures (and certainly that he’s not “clobber[ed]” by others, as was suggested in this thread). He is, of course, not the only player who I’d come to that conclusion about—which is reflective of the fact that we are talking about measures that are flawed and have a good deal of uncertainty (and where directly comparing different players’ RAPM/impact values between different years isn’t really methodologically valid, because the scaling and whatnot each year will differ). So that by itself wouldn’t really be the lead argument for Jokic as the absolute GOAT peak.

For me, as I’ve written many times in this thread, my view is more that my eye test tells me he is, and I think the box numbers and impact numbers are within the confidence interval for GOAT peak (with the box-number part probably actually being a bit stronger even than the impact numbers) and therefore are consistent with my eye test conclusion. Of course, if someone else’s eye test tells them a different answer, then it’s certainly possible that that other player that their eye test favors would *also* have box score and impact numbers consistent with being the GOAT peak. Indeed, for the players most commonly seen as GOAT peak candidates, I’d say that that *would* be the case. There are other reasonable answers here—which is why I said in my first post in this thread that “I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s “clearly” ahead of someone like LeBron (or a few of the other very top peak guys)” and that, while I pick Jokic, “there’s significant amounts of subjectivity and uncertainty at play, so I think there’s certainly room to disagree.” (https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=111803731#p111803731).