Jokic receives prestigious NBA award, but how does he not have more?

On Monday morning, Jayson Tatum and Nikola Jokic were named the NBA’s Players of the Week for the Eastern and Western Conferences respectively. Joker certainly seemed like a worthy recipient of the award as he led the Nuggets to a 3-1 record this past week, putting up 36.5 points, 16.5 rebounds, 11.3 assists, and 2.0 steals a contest over those four games.

You’d be hardpressed to find a player with a more impressive resume over the past week, and it’s even better when you factor in the context that in two of those four games, Jokic was facing off against the heavy favorite for Defensive Player of the Year, Victor Wembanyama.

Wemby did a nice job on Jokic, and yet the Nuggets superstar still put up preposterous numbers and managed to split the series with the Spurs. It’s incredible that the Joker was able to make things look so easy, even against one of the league’s marquee defenders, but Nuggets fans have become used to this over the years.

How has Jokic only won Player of the Week twice?

Nothing about Jokic winning this award or his absurd stat line should be surprising at all by now, but what is surprising is the fact that he has only won this award twice this season. This is the ninth week of the season and Jokic has only been recognized as the best player in his conference for two of those weeks.

Other winners for the conference include Anthony Davis, Devin Booker, De’Aaron Fox, Harrison Barnes, Alperen Sengun, Luka Doncic, and the aforementioned Wembanyama. While I’m sure all of those players had great weeks, I find it extremely hard to believe that they were each better than Jokic during those weeks.

As incredible as Jokic’s past week was, he barely outperformed his season-long averages. This is just what Jokic does and he shouldn’t be punished for setting his own personal bar much higher than the one every other player in the world is measured against.

In fact, I’m willing to guess that Jokic’s “worst” week of the season would be enough statistically to vault any other player in the entire league into contention for Player of the Week. It’s a double standard, but it’s one that Jokic has earned over the years.

Luckily, these awards don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things and will have little impact on the ones that will impact legacy. Jokic is still in line to win the MVP award for the fourth time in his career. 

Not only that, but Jokic is still the only player in the conference to win this award more than once (Tatum also has two in the East). Interestingly, his closest contender for MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is not one of the eight players to win this award for the Western Conference. However, SGA did take home the league’s first (and so far, only) Player of the Month award this season.