Jokic teams “only won 57,” so they probably think the Nuggets should have traded for 2021 Ayton because his so-called DPOY defense “carried” the Suns to 64 wins.

They say Jokics teams have a lower ceiling because of “center defense importance” blatantly ignoring the 30/13.5/9, going 16–4, with 39% dFG, plus 1+ BLK and 1+ STL per game in the championship run..
Or the fact that, for the first time in the Jokic era, we’ve had elite depth, and we managed to hold the #1 offense and a top-3 defense before AG and CB went out; and that’s with maybe 30% of the defensive firepower SGA has on his team.

Saying “you could put any four players next to Jokic and they wouldn’t be this good” is beyond crazy.

They claim SGA-led teams have a higher ceiling because of his “two-way play,” even though OKC’s defense improves by +4.3 in net rating with him off the floor Edit: just checked removing non-garbage minutes they are actually +8 points better on Defense without SGA

If you ever wondered how a player averaging 30-point triple-doubles over his last two seasons, with GOAT-level efficiency and impact, won’t win MVP, let me present to you: the voters.
byu/DayTrader3334 indenvernuggets

27 comments

  2. When you have someone who constantly breaks records, just constantly gets better at the game and is just an all around amazing player all the time, you get used to it.
    I joke that when he’s bored he picks a record to break and for him it’s just another Tuesday and he does it so often that it desensitizes people. 🤷🤷

  3. There’s something deeply unsettling about their faces, they look like people who’d be extremely unpleasant to be around.

    If you put Jokic on that Roster it’s absolutely as good as OKC is now, slight dip in defense and major boost in offense. Idiots.

  4. Nate Duncan has such a “i’m so much smarter than you and i have to bring it up any chance i can” vibe.

  5. Crazy how jokic has somehow gone back to being underrated while having his best season yet

  7. If sga is clearly better than jokic, a minimum top-15 player all time shouldn’t he be the Goat. I remember same type of arguments during Embiid mvp case.

  9.  “sure, they’re less talented but that doesn’t explain why they’re winning less games???”

  12. Nate Duncan has been hating on Jokic for a longggg time and has been wrong at every turn.

    Nothing to see here.

  13. Personally, I do not care what those 2 dorks think about anything, but especially not basketball.

  14. I’m not even going to get into the Jokic can’t lead a great team, regardless of who you put around him. I watched him and Serbia nearly beat Team USA and watched him win a NBA championship.

    SGA is a good perimeter defender. But the way people talk about him would make you think he’s currently an all NBA defensive guard. He’s like the 4th or 5th best defensive guard ON HIS OWN TEAM! You could replace SGA with almost any average perimeter defender and get the same result on the defensive end for OKC. Offense is a different story but it’s clear to me that SGA isn’t the engine that gets their defense going.

    He’s always hidden on the worst offensive player, that is to save his energy for offense but it’s still happening, so how do we conclude that he’s currently some sort of great defensive player that’s elevating a historic defense?

    Didn’t we all just watch the finals where Indy routinely went after SGA in matchups and took it to 7 games? They wanted SGA as the primary defender and it had success.

  15. Nate Duncan has been a jokic hater from day 1. When jok was first in the running for MVPs, he was slandering him left and right trying to double down on his years long takes of “not only can you never win a championship with Nikola Jokic as your teams center, you can never even have a league average defense with him.”

    He’s shut up a little bit about it after Jokic obviously proved both of those things wrong. But this take here is just more of the same now that he feels like he has the ammo to do the same schtick. Despite SGA being like probably the 8th best defender on his own roster.

  16. Jokic is by no means a good defender. He is average. And thats fine when hes this good offensively.

    I always laugh at people who think SGA is the reason OKC is doing as well as they are right now.

    Hes an important part of it. But put him on the Nuggets and they dont suddenly become a 70 win team.

  17. To me, it’s one of two things. Either you like Jokic’s offense and you vote Jokic for MVP, or you like Shae’s offense so you vote for the refs.

  18. Nobody genuinely covers sports anymore. It’s either ragebait or advertising for sports betting.

  21. Ngl there is way too much mvp talk. Rings are way more important. I want to go to another parade

  22. It’s so dumb that a player is more likely to win mvp if his supporting cast is better. The team relies less on him than the other player and that makes him more valuable?

  23. Both of these guys regularly say Jokic is the best player in the league, the context of this was that bc shai is a guard, his defensive impact or lack there of isn’t as important as a center, so jokic being average defensively from the center spot does make it impossible to have an all time defense. It’s really the context of how great a team can be all time if Jokic is playing center, he could’ve substituted shai for curry and he’s making the same argument. That essentially it’s impossible for a nuggets team to be as good as like the 2017 warriors. 

    They both think Jokic is better than shai tho

  24. Nate Duncan is a old-school Jokic hater. Dude can’t take that he’s wrong and keeps doubling down. This has morphed into hating in the Nuggets in general, as well

    Also, I’m not sure how a guy that sounds like that makes his living talking for a living. Like if you gave the slow kid horse tranqs

  26. Most sports trophies that use fan input are the “most popular player from last season”.  People don’t like how Joker looks playing the game, they don’t see his face plastered on anything, outside of Serbia or Colorado, and he doesn’t care enough to change perceptions.  The triple double MVP stats are not impressive compared to PPG for most people.

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