Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic is only the second player in NBA history with at least 30 points, ... [+]
Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic fell short of winning a third straight Most Valuable Player award this year, as the voters opted instead for the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid to win the prize. Jokic also slipped from All-NBA first team selection to second team this season, as it was once again Embiid who edged him out for the top center spot.
Which is not to say these second-place accolades are anything to sneeze at. And credit should be given where it’s due, as Embiid averaged 33.1 points – an absolutely ridiculous scoring total for an NBA center – along with 10.2 rebounds and 1.7 blocks as on his way to leading Philly to the league’s third-best record this season.
But even in light of the greatness of the recent achievements of Embiid and other NBA superstars, if Jokic is not the best center in the NBA, or perhaps even the best basketball player in the world at present, it would be hard to know that from the downright dominant and historic performance he’s putting in for the Nuggets this postseason.
To wit: In the entire history of the NBA (as far back as the statistics site Basketball-Reference’s records go) only two players in the league have ever averaged a minimum of 30 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists through at least ten playoff games in one postseason.
The first to do so was NBA legend and Hall of Famer Oscar Robinson, who in the playoffs of the 1962-63 season averaged 31.8 points, 13.0 rebounds and 9.0 assists through 12 games.
Which is to say that it happened 60 years ago. And only one time… until now.
The second player to hit these marks is doing so while we watch the current NBA playoffs unfold, as Jokic, the Nuggets’ five-time All-NBA and two-time MVP, is putting up 30.6 points, 13.1 rebounds and 9.5 assists through ten postseason games so far.
Simply put, this level of production from an NBA center in the playoffs is unprecedented in league history.
But it’s not only the raw numbers which Jokic is racking up. He’s producing his astounding postseason stat line at an extremely efficient level, with a 57.8% effective field goal percentage – eFG%, which accounts for the added value of three-point shots – as compared with Robinson’s 47.0% in the season he hit the same marks (though in Oscar’s defense, he was playing prior to the three-point era, which bolsters shooting efficiency for players who shoot well from long range – which Jokic is doing to the tune of a scorching 48.7% three-point percentage in these playoffs).
And adding even more icing to the cake on an already spectacular playoff performance, with his 29-point, 13 rebound and 12 assist masterpiece in Denver’s Game 5 win over Phoenix, Jokic netted his fourth triple-double of the current postseason, and the tenth of his playoff career, passing the great Wilt Chamberlain, who had nine career playoff triple-doubles, as the center with the most in NBA history.
But Jokic’s dominance on the court goes well beyond the numbers, which only tell a part of the story of just how high he has elevated his game.
One of the best examples of this came at the beginning of the third quarter in Denver’s pivotal Game 5 win that gave them a series lead of three games to two. At a critical juncture, when the Nuggets were nursing a slim three-point halftime lead, Jokic put up nine points and assisted on four more in just three and a half minutes to open the half, almost instantly ballooning Denver’s lead to 13 points and completely seizing the game’s momentum.
It’s moments like these that best highlight the “valuable” in MVP, with Jokic not only putting the Nuggets on his back with his own scoring production, but at the same time lifting the play of his teammates – specifically in this stretch Jamal Murray, who had struggled up to that point in the game with only two points on one of six shooting in the first half.
And in this series against Phoenix, the Nuggets have genuinely needed not only everything Jokic can give them, but also all the help he can get from his crew.
Despite Jokic’s historic performance so far, the Nuggets have lost two of the five games played in this series, even dropping one in a Game 4 loss where Jokic erupted with an epic 53-point scoring deluge – the most a Nuggets player has ever scored in the franchise’s playoff history.
The biggest part of these losses is of course due to elite competition in Devin Booker and Kevin Durant, and Denver’s struggles to slow especially the former down. Booker has been scorching hot this series, averaging 34.6 points through the five games, but even more impressively doing so shooting a ridiculous 60.0% from the field, and an even more absurd 57.1% on three-pointers.
Despite Jokic’s Herculean efforts, Phoenix certainly appears to have a Hercules of their own in Booker, and for the Nuggets to not only win this series but advance through the next two rounds into the NBA Finals and contend for the championship, Jokic will need to not only continue his own heroics, but to also get consistent winning contributions from the rest of his team.
But if Jokic can indeed keep playing at this historic level, and he does ultimately lead the Nuggets to their first championship, his will surely go down as one of the NBA’s all-time greatest playoff performances.
