With the end of the season approaching, we're taking a look at the case for each MVP candidate. Here's the case for the presumptive favorite and likely soon-to-be three-time MVP Nikola Jokic
2024 NBA MVP: The Definitive Case for Nikola Jokic
Per Game Stats and NBA ranking: 26.1 points (10th), 12.3 rebounds (4th), 9 assists (3rd) , 58% FG, 35% 3-point, 82% FT, 60.7% eFG (14th), PER 30.9 (1st this season,19th-best all-time), +13.3 Box Plus-Minus (1st this season, 2nd-best all-time), +6.9 EPM (5th best this season), +7 DARKO (1st this season), +6.6 LEBRON (1st this season)
The Argument For
Argument In A Nutshell: The Best Player In The World
Every night, Jokic provides five things that help his team win:
- The highest problem-solving ability in the league
- Consistent performance and production crossed with high availability
- Elite efficiency
- Control over the game
- Elite clutch performance
He is the reigning Finals MVP for a team that will likely finish with 56 wins or more, who leads in most of the advanced metrics and dictates terms to the opponent on every possession that leaves them feeling hopeless more often than not. He is arguably the best player in the league at deciphering and solving defensive coverages, without any tactic that consistently works against him.
There are no discernible weaknesses in his game. Critics will point to his lack of defensive foot-speed, but his strength, quick hands, and a two-on-ball pick-and-roll scheme that accentuates his strengths and limits his weaknesses means teams are seldom in a position to exploit him.
He has redefined the center position as a playmaker and, in the biggest games of the season, has routinely left a consensus that he is the best player on the planet.
The Problem Solver
To really understand Jokic and his impact on the game, you have to start by recognizing that if any one thing about Jokic wasn't as good as it is, he would be solvable, or closer to it.
Jokic's basketball IQ and skill is evident and present in almost every sequence and highlight. But as Jokic has grown into the MVP version, you start to understand the starting block really is his raw strength.
Kristaps Porzingis is 7-2, 240 lbs.
He's water here. Jokic just moves through him.
How about Anthony Davis, 6-10, 254 — one of the best defenders in the NBA?
Water. And one.
Jokic is so strong that if you leave him one on one, he'll absolutely put you under the basket and score. He's not necessarily a willing scorer but he's learned in time that there are games where he has to punish the defense over and over again to force the double team. And once you start helping, that's where Joker really starts to go to work.
There are many strong players in the NBA, but they don't have anywhere near Jokic's skill level. There are supremely talented players, but they don't have his strengths or instincts.
The Knicks knew they had to help Isaiah Hartenstein, so they had a game plan to wait until he was in the defensive box.
Usually, doubling from the baseline is the best way to disrupt post players. They can't see the help coming, and typically they have to take a second to dribble away from the double to reset the play or rotate the ball. Not Jokic.
Equally great about this pass was Josh Hart and Jalen Brunson bickering over whose fault that bucket was.
Jokic isn't reliant on post-ups, however. His versatility in how the Nuggets can use him, or more accurately, how he can change positions to use his teammates offensively is nearly limitless.
Jokic runs to the post here, and the nanosecond the double comes to meet him, he's already throwing the assist. This pass takes less than a second from the time it touches his hand to the time it leaves.
Jokic is obviously elite at finding cutters, but he's also a willing cutter himself. He slips backdoor when Sabonis tries to deny him the catch here, and instead of forcing a shot up in traffic, he finds the window for another easy dime.
Teams have tried so many different tactics to disrupt him. The Clippers tried the age-old front-and-double approach.
This used to work pretty well against Jokic once upon a time. Now it's a bucket.
The Cavaliers try a matchup zone to crowd the paint and take away Jokic's options. But when Christian Braun dives, he draws attention from the help defenders, and Jokic makes the secondary read.
It's a high-difficulty pass to hit this angle, perpendicular to his body throwing out, but the pass is on target where only his teammate can catch it.
The Nuggets can run so many variations of actions, it's a struggle for teams just to keep the number of coverages in their head. How about a post-up into a DHO for the power forward with the screener slipping to the bucket?
Jokic will often test rim protectors by taking threes. It has the advantage of being open, but it also dares them to close out. Here, two defenders fly right by creating the worst of all scenarios: a five on three with the ball in Jokic's hands.
The shot teams choose to give Jokic most often in the two-man game is the floater, and there is simply no one better at it.
Among all players with at least 200 shots in the paint but outside the restricted area, Jokic is the only player to shoot 60% on such shots. He is the third-best player from mid-range overall at 57%.
Even against elite rim protectors, his floater out of two-man action with Jamal Murray is effectively impossible to stop. He has the touch to put it high off the glass to adjust for the contest and can absorb contact and make it.
There is simply another level of control over the game that Jokic asserts. There are very few players in NBA history, let alone today's game, that can punish the defense no matter their approach. He outmuscled big players and outsmarts crafty ones.
The game is always at his pace. You cannot speed him up or slow him down. And whatever you choose to do, he'll make the play that must be made, over and over again.
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The Clutch Factor
The Nuggets are 23-12 in games within five points in the final five minutes this season with Nikola Jokic on the floor. They have the No. 2 clutch offense and the No. 2 clutch defense.
Joker has the fourth-most clutch-time total points this season and the best FG% in the clutch with a minimum of 50 attempts. So he scores at a high volume and shoots efficiently, and his team is excellent at both ends of the floor with him.
Anecdotally, you can look at a lot of games this season and find spots where Joker took over late. Signature wins vs. the Lakers, Warriors, and Boston late in games have showcased how the Nuggets can close out teams in clutch time behind Jokic.
Mixed Bag On Defense
I'll sum it up here at the top if you don't want to get in the weeds:
Jokic's defense was worse this season, but the results were better. He's not a good defender, but he doesn't hurt them. He's capable of being a good defender when he wants to be, but most of the time has saved his energy this season while the team has made up for it thanks to defenders like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Aaron Gordon.
Jokic ranks at the bottom of the list for allowed field goal percentage at the rim, but he ranks near the top for jumper efficiency allowed. Jokic ranks 27th guarding jump shots among 177 players with at least 250 shots defended. He's 230 out of 294 players in defending shots at the rim. Last season he was much closer to average defending the rim.
Much of what stands out is simply this: the Nuggets do a great job helping protect him, and Jokic has played softer coverage this season to protect the amount of distance he has to travel.
For those of you who feel Joker is "barbecued chicken" on defense, here's basically where he gets annihilated. Scottie Barnes stretches the play out off a good screen, forcing the switch. Joker has zero chance of contain:
If Joker plays soft coverage at the level players can get the edge, even when he's up in coverage, and completely smoke him. Anthony Edwards leaves him with scorch marks here:
These are the plays where it feels like Jokic isn't that effective.
Defending shots at the rim this season, Jokic ranks 58th out of 95 players with at least 200 shots defended at the rim. He ranks 65th out of 75 players with 200 shots "around the rim" defended via Synergy Sports. He's just not a rim protector in any meaningful sense.
So how do you explain this, then?
Fewest points allowed per pick as the big defender (guarding the screener) this season. pic.twitter.com/ar3BS69sqs
— Todd Whitehead (@CrumpledJumper) March 26, 2024
The answer comes down to how Jokic gets help from Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (who should be All-Defense this season) and Aaron Gordon.
Plays like this where Gordon comes over the top of the screen, pursues and contests make up a huge bulk of the plays with Jokic in pick and roll this season:
The Nuggets used drop coverage with Jokic way more this season than in previous seasons, mostly in an attempt to conserve Jokic's energy.
When Jokic is engaged and the Nuggets are giving something closer to playoff level execution, Jokic plays right at the level and challenges the ball-handler. This is their most successful coverage.
Look at the difference when Jokic gives a soft effort at the level vs. Paul George (and when teams successfully space out his backside rim protector in Aaron Gordon):
And when he commits:
The real advantage to this coverage, when successful, is to force ball-handlers to pick up their dribble, as Luka Doncic does here, resulting in a turnover.
It allows the weak side rotations more time to recover and get back into position, and Denver has done this so much through the years that they understand how to recover into passing lanes.
When the Nuggets put this kind of work in, they are dominant; it's they have the No. 2 clutch-time defense in the NBA, most of that with Jokic on the floor.
One other area Jokic has gotten better at is disrupting lobs. Because of his earthbound game and slow foot speed, defenders that attacked in pick and roll could space him and throw lobs over him.
He used to have trouble with players like Clint Capela and Nerlens Noel for this reason. But he's gotten much better at anticipating those plays:
Ultimately, the deep data and film suggest that Jokic wasn't engaged or impactful on the defensive end, particularly not as much as the past two seasons, but also that you simply cannot make an argument he hurt them on that end. Jokic is tied with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander among the four major MVP candidates (along with Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo) in on-court defensive rating.
That doesn't mean that Jokic is as good of a defender as either SGA or Giannis, he's not. (I would give him the slight nod over Doncic based solely on the fact that Jokic has fewer zero-effort possessions.) But his defense hasn't hurt the Nuggets, and while his defensive play needs to be considered, it's hard to make a case for it to drag his case down this season.
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The Advanced Stats
As always, Jokic is the darling of the advanced stats community.
He leads the league by a wide margin Box Plus-Minus (which has closely mirrored the NBA vote totals through the years). He leads in both offensive and defensive Box Plus-Minus, mostly on account of how his impact as a passing center helps his offensive numbers for that stat and how his dominant rebounding boosts his defensive numbers.
Jokic is on pace for the second-best Box Plus-Minus season of all time behind… his 2022 MVP season. There's a level of self-defeating prophecy here; Jokic is so dominant in this particular advanced stat that you start to wonder how it benefits him specifically so much. But the answer is pretty simple. He's the best passing center of all time who is one of the best rebounders in league history. That combo is what puts him there.
He's first in PER, which should be no surprise, as that metric rewards shot volume and rebounding.
One of the difficult things for me to evaluate with Jokic is that he is not having a career year in any statistical category. All of his career numbers are down, in part because the Nuggets have needed less from him.
The team runs on autopilot for much of the year. Denver wins by more vs. teams under .500 than in any season of Jokic's career. He has played in more games than last season, played more minutes per game, and his usage has been higher than all but his 2022 season.
But despite more usage and lower efficiency, the Nuggets have won more, and by more points. In some ways, Jokic's MVP candidacy is reaping the rewards of all the work he and the rest of the organization put into finding consistency. There has not been a more Spurs-like team since the Spurs' dynasty ended.
Jokic's at-rim efficiency is way lower. The tape shows a lot of missed bunnies, even if he often rebounds them for put-backs. His 3-pointer isn't where it was last year.
But the problem remains: if his really-good-but-not-his-best season is still categorically better than everyone else's, can you really punish him for his past success? Is a multi-time MVP winner judged against his peers or his former self?
Ultimately, Joker' case is hardest to make from a resume standpoint. He's not the definitive one-seed like last year. His team hasn't won by the most with him on the floor like last year (or the year before or the year before or the year before).
But there is no scarier force that teams have to face right now. Giannis is a physical challenge. Luka is maddening with his skill combinations and scoring relentlessness.
However, Joker is something else. There are no good answers for him. You can't build a wall or exhaust him or send help. You just have to hope shots don't fall and yours have and if you do all that, you still have to make it out of crunch time.
Nikola Jokic is the best player in the world, and he's unsolvable. That's why he's the 2024 Most Valuable Player.
