Doctor MJ wrote:eminence wrote:'03 Dirk
'04 KG
'09 LeBron
'16 Dray
'23 Jokic
'24 Jokic
Is the list I believe ('97 onwards, though I don't think anyone got '94-'96, though Robinson would be very close in '94/'95).
Playing like the best team in the league (RS) with them on court, playing big minutes, and very important to the squad. It's an elite list for sure.
Awesome, beat me to it.
Yeah I think we have to really get right with the fact that Jokic may well end up as the most impactful regular season player we've ever seen. There may still be arguments then pertaining to the playoffs of course, but this continued skepticism we're seeing from non-casual observers that Jokic can really be "that" impactful isn't based on rigorous rational analysis but rather instinctive intuition that someone who looks like Jokic can't possibly be better than all the Adonises we've ever seen in a sport long defined by Adonises.
And more broadly, what I see happening at this point is a broader (non-casual and casual) crisis where people actively dislike acknowledging that quick-twitch athleticism is considerably less important than has long been assumed in basketball in a way it isn't with a more pure game such as, say, the 100m dash.
It's of course not a coincidence that such physical talent helps in basketball, but focusing on superficial physicality like this is something that specifically underplays the role of the skill that was supposed to be the most important skill in Naismith's game:
Passing.
A passed ball moves faster than the fastest human body.
The thing that's so tricky here from a scout's perspective I think is that scouts absolutely look to identify "feel", but they do so on such a coarse, qualitative scale that basically any player with the wherewithal to make a few good passes is lumped in the same category and an actual basketball genius like Jokic realistically can't get the amount of hype he deserves despite every scout who sees him shouting "great feel".
And I'll note I say this because Jokic's development in the NBA was nothing like Giannis. Yeah it took some time before the Nuggets' began running everything through Jokic, but not because he was raw as a rookie - he was quite clearly the smartest basketball player on the team by far as a rookie, and he showed on-off impact from the jump. This is important because while Giannis was literally not Giannis yet when he was drafted, and the Bucks really just got lucky in his continued physical development, the whole NBA scouting world only seemed "meh" impressed by Jokic when they should have been seeing him as already smarter than anyone else around.
Jokic falling to where he fell in the draft should be looked upon as a MASSIVE failure of the scouting profession rather than a failure of particular scouts. We know why it happened, and teams should now be working extremely hard to better scout for true outliers of BBIQ.
Some things I agree with, some things not so much.
Agree with:
-Jokic is absolutely top tier in RS impact for the era we have more granular data.
-Passing (particularly quick decision passing that doesn't involve dribbling prior) is an extremely valuable skill that I find is often underrated.
-Quickness is an overrated physical attribute for basketball.
At least somewhat disagree with:
-I think you're using too much hindsight to hype Jokic the prospect. He wasn't *that* good at Mega in '14 and showed no serious flashes of being the best passer in the world while operating as a 3rd option of sorts (most notably behind Micic). There was serious skill development after the draft (likely IQ development as well). I expect he would've been drafted significantly higher after his '15 season where he was both more showcased offensively and had developed further.
-I'm not sure high BBIQ guys differ that much more on average from their scouting reports than more physically gifted prospects (obviously everyone is actually a balance of IQ/skill/physical gifts). The second most 'missed' prospect in Jokic's draft was Capela, about as far on the physical side as one can get in terms of NBA success. The season prior Giannis/Gobert were both massively underdrafted and are also pretty far on the physical gifts side.
