Nuggets’ Jokic has a chance to join some exclusive clubs
SALT LAKE CITY >> The clubs that Nikola Jokic might be on the cusp of entering are highly exclusive.
There’s the three-consecutive-MVP club, with only Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird as its current members. Then there’s the averaged-a-triple-double club, which includes only Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook.
Jokic doesn’t care about being added to either of those lists. It might happen anyway.
The best team in the Western Conference so far has been the Denver Nuggets, and the biggest reason why they’re atop the standings coming out of the AllStar break is the 28-year-old Serbian big man who was the league’s best player two years ago, was the league’s best player last year and very well might be the best again this year.
“I can’t lie,” Cleveland guard Donovan Mitchell said. “I don’t know if you all have been watching what Jokic has been doing. It’s ... outrageous, to be honest. I don’t know how many people have won it three times in a row. I definitely feel like I’m in that conversation as well, but he’s otherworldly right now.”
Jokic’s numbers: 24.7 points, 11.5 rebounds and 10.1 assists per game, on 63% shooting from the field, 39% from 3-point range. Such a collection of stats is unprecedented; others have scored more, assisted more, rebounded more and shot better, but nobody has ever had all those averages and percentages in one season — especially not a big man.
Westbrook is a guard. Robertson was a guard. In their average-a-triple-double years — four for Westbrook, one for Robertson — they didn’t shoot better than 48%. Jokic is making almost two of every three shots he takes, and that’s with him as the top priority for every defense Denver faces.
“I just think that he just plays at his own pace,” Toronto’s Pascal Siakam said. “You can’t really disrupt what he does. He just plays at his own pace. He does what he wants. His passing ability, the scoring, how smart he is on the basketball court. Yeah, it’s dope to watch.”
The Nuggets are five games ahead of Memphis — Denver has 23 games left, the Grizzlies have 25 — for the top spot in the Western Conference. They’re well on their way to securing the No. 1 seed and home-court advantage throughout at least the first three rounds of the playoffs.
And that would be huge, given that Denver’s 27-4 home record is the best in the NBA. Evidently, teams don’t like playing at 5,280 feet above sea level. And they can’t match the way Jokic thinks, with his brain in home games at 5,287 feet above sea level. He’s played in 51 games; the Nuggets are 38-13 in those contests, 3-5 when he doesn’t play.
Denver coach Michael Malone was asked how he would create a pie chart to show the components that make Jokic great.
“Athleticism, 1%. I’ll start there,” Malone said. “Then I would say the big pieces of that Serbian pie would be IQ and unselfishness, the ability to make every one of his teammates better. What I marvel at, having coached Nikola for eight years now, the thing that I’m just blown away by is the consistency to being great. I mean, there are a lot of great players in this league. But for Nikola to win the MVP, to win it again, and now he’s putting together an even better season ... it just speaks to the fact that he is so damn consistent.”