Are We Witnessing The Greatest Peak In NBA History?

What does the best version of the best basketball player we've ever seen look like? Many fans would point out Michael Jordan from 1988 to 1991 as the absolute best version of a player they've ever seen. LeBron from 2010 to 2013 might also be the best version of any player in the game's history. But there have been a lot of great players who have had a lot of incredible seasons. 2000 Shaq, 2016 Curry. Maybe your choice is MVP and Defensive Player of the Year, But maybe a better way to visualize this question is this. A chart of the 100 greatest three-year peaks in modern NBA history with box plus minus on the Y-axis and win shares per 48 on the X-axis. The further up a player is, the more productive and efficient their peak was. The further right, the larger their impact was on their team's winning. And even towards the bottom of this chart, you'll find some great names like Ray Allen at 78, DeMarcus Cousins at 66. Keep going up and you'll find perennial all-stars and franchise players like Jason Tatum, who is currently in the 46th highest peak over the last 40 plus seasons. Paul George just above him and Vince Carter at 40. Now, this isn't some perfect method to measure players. Most advanced metrics tend to undervalue defense and overvalue offense. But overall, this gives us a great picture of how impactful players were at the peak of their powers relative to the rest of the league. And at this point, we reach all-time great peaks. The guys who can carry an entire team, Luka at 15, Magic Johnson at 11, Stephen Durant at seven and six, James Harden and his best three-season stretch just ahead of them. Giannis with the fourth highest individual peak and head and shoulders above everyone else with almost identical peak numbers are Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Clearly the two best peaks we've ever seen. Until Nikola Jokic showed up and completely blew the lid off of just how valuable one player can be to his team. Is Nikola Jokic the best version of any basketball player ever? Today's video is brought to you by SeatGeek. The NBA season is heating up. Your favorite artists are on tour and y'all are gonna need some tickets. Now, you guys have used my promo code so much that SeatGeek wanted to hook you up with a new promo and a new special offer. And it's the best one yet. For the rest of the season, everyone who uses code JIMMY10 will get 10% off any tickets on SeatGeek. Whether you're new to the app or you've been using it for years like me, code JIMMY10 is good for 10% off any order on SeatGeek. Just get into the app, find the best tickets for you by using their color-coded seating map, punch in the promo code and you're done. Take advantage of this deal while it's still around. Download the SeatGeek app and use code JIMMY10 for 10% off any order. How do you know when a player is truly impacting the game? They can put up great numbers, but that doesn't always translate to winning basketball. You can use the eye test, but our eyes can be deceiving. However, there is one surefire way to tell. And that's when a player is so important and so valuable that their team is utterly lost without them. Every time they step out of the game, everything falls apart. We saw this with LeBron at points in his career. We've seen this many times with Steph. And just a couple days ago, we saw this with Nikola Jokic. In their recent matchup against the Warriors, Jokic started the game and the Nuggets got out to a six-point lead before he checked out for the first time with 1.32 left in the first quarter. Now pay attention to the score and the time left on the clock. By the time Jokic re-entered the game, five minutes later, the Nuggets were down five points. Jokic helped the Nuggets overcome that deficit and by the time he checked out again at the end of the third, the Nuggets were back up by five. By the time he returned to the game, just two and a half minutes later, the Nuggets were down three points. Jokic played the rest of the game and the Nuggets ended up winning by four. Jokic was on the bench for just eight minutes of this game, was a net plus 42 points, and the Nuggets won this game by just four. And that pretty much sums up how important Nikola Jokic is on a basketball court. Pair the impact he makes on his team's success with stat lines that make you question everything you've ever known about basketball and you have yourself a player who is beginning to enter conversations that some fans aren't quite ready to have. Are we witnessing the highest peak in the history of the NBA? Some people think so. We're now going on five seasons of this guy being the best player on the planet and despite three MVPs and four seasons, the man has somehow found a way to take his game to even another level. Is there still a gap between Jokic and the highest peaks in basketball history? Or is this version of Jokic peaking higher than any player we have ever seen before? Well, there's a pile of evidence that suggests he is. So far this season, when Jokic is on the floor, the Nuggets score 31 more points per 100 possessions, which means Jokic is single-handedly the difference between the Nuggets being one of the best offenses in NBA history and one of the worst. But the absence of any great offensive player will wreak havoc on a team. It should be expected that a system will struggle when you take out their most valuable and important player. From 2015 to 2017, the three-year offensive peak of Steph Curry's career, the Warriors scored 15 more points per 100 possessions when he was on the court versus when he wasn't. And Steph's offensive value throughout this three-year stretch had become the gold standard in the modern NBA. According to Cleaning the Glass, which has a database that dates back to 2004, no other player over the last 21 seasons has been able to match Steph's offensive impact. LeBron came relatively close from 2008 to 2010, elevating the Cavs' offense by 13.5 points per 100 possessions. Peak Chris Paul and Steve Nash were the catalyst to two incredible offenses. But even amongst offensive juggernauts, Steph was in a league of his own. Until Jokic hit his peak, where he has been the most impactful offensive player over the last two decades, and it's not even remotely close. Over the last three seasons, the Nuggets scored 23.3 more points per 100 possessions when Jokic is on the court. That is a larger gap than most starting fives have over their bench unit. Jokic is making this big of an impact by himself. And we already knew that he was approaching, if not already at the level, of some of the best, most impactful players in NBA history. But to really enter the conversation, Jokic first had to do what every all-time great must. Prove that he could be this good over and over and over again. That his dominance transcended who you put around him, and that his impact wasn't some three-year abnormality. And he's now done that. He's way past the point of skepticism, and now entering the point where we have almost built a tolerance to his absolutely mind-bending stat lines. Basketball Reference cites a season where a player achieves a box plus minus of 10 or more as an all-time great season. As they put it, think Peek Jordan or LeBron. And only 16 players in the history of the NBA have achieved this mark for a single season. Only four of these 16 players have achieved this mark in multiple seasons. Those players being LeBron, Jordan, Giannis, and Chris Paul. Nikoli Jokic has a box plus minus of 10 or more for his entire career. Easily the highest BPM of any player in NBA history. In fact, there have only been eight individual seasons where a player logged a box plus minus of at least 12. LeBron James did it once back in 2009, the most productive and high usage season of his entire career. Michael Jordan did it twice, once back in 1988, arguably the greatest individual season in NBA history and the best statistical season of his career, and again in 1991. This season, Nikoli Jokic is on path to accomplishing this feat as well, joining an exclusive club with the two greatest players of all time. But he's been in the club for a while now because he also did it last season and the season before that. Oh, and the season before that and the season before that one. Five straight seasons of basketball, equal or better than the very best seasons of LeBron and Jordan. But you don't have to seek out metrics to see how Jokic has mastered the game. Every single time he steps on the court, it is clear that he is just simply better than everyone else. From the top of the key all the way to the rim, there isn't anywhere on the court where Jokic can't pick apart a team. Near the rim, Jokic is virtually automatic. He's got the size and strength to abuse even the best big men in the league because as everyone was tailoring their game to spacing and athleticism and speed, Jokic has gone the other direction. The size of a true big with footwork and touch around the rim that most defenders in the NBA today have no idea what to do with. For most big punishing centers, this is the extent of their expertise. A game built to dominate around the rim. And there's two counters for players like this. Try to push their game away from the rim or collapse and force them to make a play. Two counters that have been relatively effective since the beginning of time. Except Jokic will feast on both of these options. As the best playmaker in the league, collapsing or sending multiple defenders at Jokic doesn't work. He'll find the open man and make you pay with a three ball. The man is sick. If anything, this is probably his preference. Send help. We wanted the three anyways. So as of late, teams have tried option number two. Force his game away from the rim. And this has worked in the past. As we saw in last year's playoffs, teams forced Jokic to shoot the outside shot and he struggled quite a bit. 26% on four threes a game in the postseason. This was the chink in his armor. Well, at least it was. Because this season, Jokic is shooting 50% from three on 4.2 attempts per game. 50%. The second most efficient three point shooter in the league among all players shooting at least four threes a game. So he can crush you around the rim and you don't even want him to get the ball down there. But he's now one of the most efficient three point shooters in the league. So we can't let him operate however he wants out there. So let's play him close. Put a big body on him. Deny the passing lanes and get physical. Again, a tactic that worked against Jokic about as well as any other. Except that doesn't work either. Because Jokic also has the ability to put the ball on the floor and go downhill. Which shouldn't be possible for a guy his size, but he does it. And once he gets to the middle of the floor, well, now you've lost. In the NBA, a player's gravity is a concept that has really become one of the most valuable things to possess. This is what offensive gravity looks like. When Jokic gets to this spot, the defense completely sinks in and bends however he wants it to. From here, he becomes the most lethal offensive weapon the game has ever seen. With the size, IQ, and skills to do whatever he wants. From this spot, there really isn't anything preventing Jokic from at least getting the shot that he or his team wants. Again, the best passer and playmaker in the league. So he'll find the open man if and when you close on him. Give him space and he's capable of hitting the shot all day long. Or maybe he'll just put his back to the basket and back you into oblivion while you question if all that time you spent in the weight room was really worth it. Peak Jokic doesn't really have any weaknesses on offense. At the moment, not only is there no consistent, tangible way of stopping him, it looks like there isn't even a way to slow him down. And although this can be said about a few players who hit all-time high peaks, there may not be another player who is as consequential to their team and its success as Nikola Jokic is. So far this season, Jokic touches the ball 113 times per game. That's any time he receives a pass or grabs a rebound, a mark that leads the NBA by a country mile. But the crazy part is that the Nuggets only have 100 possessions per game this season, which means on average, Jokic touches the ball not just every single Nuggets possession, but multiple times on several possessions. In fact, since the NBA introduced tracking data back in 2014, here are some all-time great players and how involved they were in their team's system throughout their three-year peak, how many touches per possession they were getting. And across the board, all of them are floating between 0.6 and 0.8 touches per team possession, with LeBron, Harden, and Luka carrying the heaviest load of anyone. Luka even approaching a one-to-one touch-to-possession ratio throughout the last three seasons, the Mavericks needing him to be involved in nearly every possession. And still, Jokic is on a whole nother level, where he is being utilized on virtually every single possession in every single game for three straight seasons. So not only does Jokic statistically contribute more to his team's winning, the load he is burdened with dwarfs even the greatest high-impact players over the last decade. Jokic isn't just the most important piece in Denver's offense, he is Denver's offense, which brings us to the one glaring pitfall for Jokic's case Defense. A solid defensive player at his best, and a net negative player at his worst. And this is the one factor that may prevent him from peaking higher than anyone else. There's two sides of the ball, he's the best we've ever seen on one side, and he's okay on the other side. Meanwhile, there have been many great players that have been incredible on both ends. Mike, LeBron, Kareem, Duncan, Kobe, Hakeem, even Shaq and Bird were great defensive players at the peak of their powers. Jordan was almost as impactful on offense as Jokic is, while being one of the best defensive players in the league at his peak. Same goes with LeBron. And because most advanced metrics neglect defense or measure it incorrectly, the impact they had on the game doesn't quite translate to the numbers we see on the back end. For example, this season, even the best all-in-one metric, estimated plus minus, has Jokic in the 92nd percentile on defense, with an EPM of plus 1.4, ahead of players like Drew Holiday and Jason Tatum. This same metric has peak DPOY candidate LeBron at a defensive EPM of just plus 1.2, which is worse defensively than Jokic this season. And it doesn't take an analyst to know Jokic and 2013 LeBron are worlds apart on the defensive end. Where Jokic gets the benefit from virtually every metric we look at, some other players may not. And I don't know if unprecedented offensive mastery is enough to overcome the fact that Jokic is considerably worse on defense than others are. At least, I don't think so. But when I actually watch Jokic play, it's not the metrics, but my eyes that tell me he's influencing and impacting the game just as much as anyone I've ever seen. It feels a bit weird to put Jokic in the same conversation with a peak Jordan or a peak LeBron, two players who have essentially been levitating above everyone else. As valuable as Jokic is, I witnessed a man carry second-rate teams to the finals over and over and over. And contending with the greatest player of all time is a task that no one has ever been able to pull off. But everything from the metrics to the eye test says he is truly that caliber of player right now. The man has been the best player in the world for half a decade. So ask yourself, how many players in NBA history have been the best player for more than two, maybe three years at a time? There has been a lot of guys who've worn the crown, but how many held onto it for extended periods? The list isn't very long. Kareem, Bird, Magic, Jordan, Shaq, Duncan, LeBron, maybe six or seven players in the league's history? Well, whatever list you came up with, Jokic is now on it. And he isn't just the best player on the planet today, he is one of the best versions of any player ever.