There’s this fun thing I like to do sometimes that I affectionately call the Barry Bonds game. How it works: You go onto baseball-reference, pull up the page for the legendary San Francisco Giants slugger, and just look at how ridiculous it was that Bonds was able to put up the numbers he did during his prime. Yes, steroids, I know, but even with that caveat, individual players are not supposed to break their sport the way that Barry Bonds was able to break the game of baseball.
We’re not fully there yet, but going onto Nikola Jokic‘s basketball-reference page is getting to a similarly very silly point. Ever since becoming the no-doubt cornerstone of the Denver Nuggets back in 2018-19, Jokic has consistently put up some of the wildest numbers in the league. His last four years feature three MVPs and a second-place finish while averaging 26.1 points, 12.2 rebounds, 8.7 assists, and 1.4 steals in 34.1 minutes per game while shooting 58.8 percent from the field and 36.4 percent from three. The advanced stats especially love him — scroll on down to the “Advanced” section, a lot of stuff is bold (led the league) and a few things are gold (all-time career marks).
There is no one quite like Jokic, and there has never been anyone quite like Jokic. His career True Shooting percentage is third in league history, behind only Rudy Gobert and DeAndre Jordan, while attempting 1,942 more three-pointers than those two combined. His career total rebound percentage is 15th, right in between ABA legend Mel Daniels and Marcus Camby. He’s 25th all time in assist percentage — the three names directly behind him are Ja Morant, Ricky Rubio, and LeBron James. The dude just has his fingerprints all over games in a way that no one has ever consistently matched.
I say all of that to say this: Somehow, someway, on a team that needs him more than ever (which says a lot as the entire franchise is built around having him), Jokic has raised his game through the first stretch of the 2024-25 season. This should not be possible. It’s not even like he’s suddenly adding something new to his bag of tricks, he’s just better than ever at being Nikola Jokic.
Small sample size caveats are prominent here, but here’s some stuff to consider:
Points per game: 29.7 (fifth in the NBA, his current career-high is 27.1 PPG)
Rebounds per game: 13.7 (leads the NBA, current career-high is 13.8 RPG)
Assists per game: 11.7 (leads the NBA, current career-high is 9.8 APG)
Steals per game: 1.7 (t-9th in the NBA, current career-high is 1.7 SPG)
The only players to ever average a triple-double over a full season, of course, are Oscar Robertson (once) and Russell Westbrook (four times). Neither of them, in any of their triple-double seasons, were in the same galaxy as Jokic’s current True Shooting percentage of 66.7 percent — both guys, funny enough, posted a TS% of 55.4 percent in their most efficient season with a triple-double. And all of the advanced stats that tend to show that Jokic is a marvel (PER, win shares per 48 minutes, box plus/minus) are outrageous — if the season ended today, he’d post the highest single-season PER (33.31) of all-time, the highest BPM (15.02) of all-time, and the fourth-highest WS/48 of all-time behind some guys named Kareem and Wilt.
So, yeah, Jokic is a joke, the single best basketball player in the world today and the guy spearheading a Nuggets team with some flaws that came as the result of a talent drain over the last few years to an early 7-3 record and, as of this writing, the longest-active winning streak (five games) in the Western Conference. And here’s the funny thing: If Denver did not have Jokic playing like this, they would be in some serious trouble. Have a look at how dire things get when he is not on the floor, via PBP Stats:
There is a reason why, when asked what the ideal number of minutes is for Jokic to be on the floor for the Nuggets, Michael Malone said “48.” We’ve seen plenty of teams over the years be totally helpless when the sun around which everything revolves goes to the bench — LeBron’s teams in his prime were famously horrendous when he would sit, the Sixers have an organizational commitment to being awful without Joel Embiid, etc. — but seeing as how Jokic is either scoring or assisting on nearly half of all the points that Denver scores, well, it’s pretty important that he never comes off the floor. That’ll have to change at some point (well, probably), but Jokic playing like this means it’s easier for the Nuggets to slowly bring along their young guys who have to take on bigger roles this season — although it must be said that Christian Braun has impressed as the de facto Kentavious Caldwell-Pope replacement. They can also afford to be patient with Jamal Murray, who still hasn’t quite looked like himself on the heels of a pretty nasty run of injuries that made his postseason and Olympic efforts hard to watch at times, but just got paid in a big way and absolutely has to get on track.
Of course, at some point, Denver is going to need to totally round into form, even if there are some really encouraging signs beyond Jokic. Aaron Gordon has been awesome so far this year when healthy, while Michael Porter Jr. continues to just do his thing as a huge dude who can shoot the hell out of the basketball. When 75 percent of the core your team is built around is playing at a high level from the start of the year — and that final member of your core has a reputation for saving his best for when the lights get brighter — you’re usually in a pretty good spot.
There are still big picture questions that can only be answered when the playoffs roll around, which is the curse of being a team with title-or-bust aspirations. In the meantime, all anyone can really do is sit back, watch, and marvel at the spectacle that is Nikola Jokic, the best player in the world at the very height of his powers, someone who keeps finding ways to break the game of basketball, and an all-time great who stands shoulder-to-shoulder alongside the greatest players to ever set foot on the hardwood. And the scary part? As the early portion of this season has shown, if anything, he’s only getting better.
