Denver Nuggets: Season review, Nikola Jokic

For this Denver Nuggets season review, we will be looking at the cornerstone piece, Nikola Jokic.

By now, we have already heard all of the platitudes for the Denver Nuggets’, Nikola Jokic. He is one of the up and coming young stars in the NBA, he is one of the “unicorns,” with Kristaps Porzingis and Karl Anthony Towns and he is bound to have a bright future barring something drastic happening.

So, just exactly how effective was he this past season? Jokic improved his scoring average to 18.5 points per game according to basketball reference. He was an amazing passer like usual tallying 6.1 assists per game and also possessed an effective field goal percentage of 55.4%.

His advanced analytics were also impressive. Jokic had a value above replacement rating of 5.6 and also had a total rebound percentage of 18.5%. Jokic even improved his win shares from 9.7 to 10.7 showcasing his importance to the Nuggets. Analytics aside, Jokic did a lot of good things from the eye test perspective as well.

He took charge many times this season and looked very comfortable in a leadership role. During some games, Jokic ran the offense as if he was the quarterback and looked like a great floor general for this Denver Nuggets squad. An impressive feat considering Denver brought in veteran All Star, Paul Millsap, to help get this team over the hump and mentor Nikola.

When Millsap went down with a wrist injury, Jokic took the reigns over and helped this team stay afloat in the post season picture. Obviously things could have been better since they missed the playoffs by one game, but they could have been worse as well.

Oh, and we cannot forget the plethora of triple doubles as well. The Joker was in the top five for triple doubles with the likes of Russell Westbrook, LeBron James and Ben Simmons. Impressive to say the least.

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Jokic had another great year and looks as if his trajectory is only going to keep going upward.