Denver Nuggets: Three reasons why Nikola Jokic isn’t the MVP
By Sean Carroll
Denver Nuggets: Fans are becoming desensitized to his statistical brilliance
This season, Nikola Jokic is averaging 26.3 points per game, 13.5 rebounds, 7.9 assists with 1.4 steals a night while shooting 58 percent from the floor, 35 percent from the 3-point line, and 82 percent from the free throw line.
He’s leading the league in offensive win shares, box plus/minus, value over replacement player, and player efficiency rating. When he’s on the court, the Nuggets have a 118.1 offensive rating, just under 10 points worse per 100 possessions according to Cleaning the Glass. For context, Denver’s offense goes from 25th worst in the league to 1.5 points better than the rest of the league when Jokic is out there.
Did you read all of that?
At some point, we all know that Jokic is incredible and he’s defying what we thought we knew about offensive production. Voters are going to hear the case from multiple teams, campaigning for their players, and you can pick and choose stats to make certain players look better than others.
It can be too overwhelming.
A rebuttal to this point is that Jokic passes the eye test with flying colors. It’s not like he’s some statistical anomaly that you can’t understand, you watch him play the games and his on-court production is just as dominating against the rest of the league.