This could get a little bit awkward, let’s just get that out of the way.
But, then again, Nikola Jokic’s path to the NBA’s elite has never been conventional. And there’s no debate about his status now after he was announced Wednesday night as the winner of the NBA’s MVP award for the third time in four seasons. The win coming on the heels of his Finals MVP performance, when, 11 months ago, he led the Denver Nuggets to their first championship in franchise history.
But he’s the least likely great player ever, it seems fair to say.
Famously, he was taken 41st overall in the 2014 NBA draft. For those keeping track, that’s 40 picks behind Canadian Andrew Wiggins, who was taken first overall that year, 25 picks behind Jusuf Nurkic, who was the first big man the Nuggets chose that year and 23 picks after the Toronto Raptors selected Bruno Caboclo. But in the intervening decade, the Serbian big man has incrementally worked his way into the conversation as one of the best basketball players not only of his generation, but any generation before him.
That Jokic’s history-making affirmation — he’s now on a list of just nine players to have won the most coveted award in NBA history three times — comes at a moment of rare crisis for Denver may not be ideal. That his Nuggets are down 2-0 to the Minnesota Timberwolves will only give the small but vocal doubters of his basketball genius added fuel to argue against him as an all-time great.
And if Denver bows out in the second round of its title defence, it will certainly make Jokic’s acceptance of the award a less joyous moment than it should be. But no matter. The big Serbian has put his imprint on the sport, and now he has the hardware to show for it.
The field was deep. Certainly, Canadian national team star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was every inch an MVP in leading the Oklahoma City Thunder in his sixth season, made a run at it. Jokic earned 79 out of a possible 99 first-place votes from accredited media members, to go along with 18 second-place votes and two third-place votes. Gilgeous-Alexander finished second with 15 first-place votes, 40 second-place votes, 40 third-place votes, three fourth-place votes and one fifth-place vote. He’s the first Canadian other than two-time MVP Steve Nash to earn MVP votes and he improved on his fifth-place finish from a year ago. Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo were the only others to get first-place votes and finished third and fourth on the ballot, respectively, with Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks rounding out the top five.
Still, that Jokic has reached the status he has remains one of the NBA’s great upsets, a triumph for everyone who wished to be a professional athlete, but stubbornly remains trapped in a body better suited for throwing darts or slumping into the couch.
Aside from being seven feet tall, he fails everyone’s eye test. Although he’s made strides with his fitness in recent years, he still has the vague outlines of a milk bag: soft and squishy, at least by NBA standards. Athletically, he makes running look really hard and jumping even more difficult. In general, he avoids it, doing his best work on his tippy toes.
But none of that has ever mattered when the ball went up. He was third in Rookie of the Year voting in 2015-16, his first NBA season after spending another year developing in Serbia after his draft year. He was second in Most Improved Player voting in Year 2. By Year 3, the outlines of the player he is now were becoming evident as he put up 18.5 points, 10.7 rebounds and 6.1 assists on shooting splits of 50 per cent from the floor, 39.6 per cent from three and 85 per cent from the free-throw line — just shy of 50/40/90 holy grail of scoring efficiency and almost unheard from for a centre.
And since then? All Jokic has done is establish himself as an all-timer. Over the past four seasons, he’s averaging 26.1 points per game to go along with 12.2 rebounds and 8.7 assists while shooting 58.8 per cent from the floor in an economical 34.4 minutes per game. No player before him has ever matched those levels of overall efficiency and playmaking.
And he showed last season that the brightest stage in the sport was no big deal to him, as the stoic big man shrugged his way to his Finals MVP award and championship before heading home to tend to his beloved trotters.
On a personal note, I had Gilgeous-Alexander first on my ballot, followed by Jokic and then Doncic rounding out my top three. Any of them would have been worthy choices to win, but I went with Gilgeous-Alexander because of the impact he had in lifting the baby-faced Thunder from 10th place and 40 wins a season ago to first in the West and 57 wins this season. The shape-shifting maestro did it with prolific and efficient scoring (30.1 points a game on 53.4 per cent shooting), incredible consistency (his 51 games of 30 points or more broke Kevin Durant’s franchise record and was the most in the NBA since Kobe Bryant had 56 games with 30 or more in 2005-06) while also contributing defensively (he tied for the NBA lead in steals on an OKC team that ranked fourth in team defence).
But knocking off the best player on the defending NBA champion while Jokic put up another brilliant season (26.4/12.4/9.0 while shooting 58.3 per cent from the floor) was always going to be a tall order.
With his third MVP award, Jokic officially enters the NBA pantheon, with only Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and LeBron James to have at least three in their trophy case.
But here’s the awkward part: Jokic’s MVP award comes on the heels of two of his worst playoff games ever, as the Nuggets were dominated at home — where they were undefeated during the championship run a year ago — by the Minnesota Timberwolves, who rolled into the playoffs as the NBA’s best defensive team during the regular season and have upped their game in the post-season, running their record to 6-0, with a defensive rating of 105.5, an improvement on their regular season mark.
It’s not entirely unprecedented for a regular-season MVP winner to run into problems in the playoffs. When Dirk Nowitzki finally won his long-overdue MVP award in 2006-07, his 67-win Dallas Mavericks club was knocked off in the first round by the Golden State Warriors in what is probably the biggest playoff upset in league history, and certainly made for the saddest MVP award presentation in league history. Nowitzki accepted his trophy, stuffed it in a closet and went on a weeks-long walkabout in the Australian outback to clear his head.
When Magic Johnson won his third MVP award in 1990, his Lakers were knocked out in five games to the Phoenix Suns in the second round. When Abdul-Jabbar won the third of his six MVP awards, in 1976, his Lakers didn’t even make the playoffs. Nash never made the NBA Finals in either of his MVP seasons. It happens.
But seeing Jokic and the Nuggets struggle has been close to shocking. Doubtless, if Gilgeous-Alexander can keep the Thunder on the path they’re on — they’ll be trying to go up 2-0 over Doncic and the Mavericks on Thursday night — it will make up for any disappointment in finishing second and not first in the MVP voting. By the same token, there’s no chance that Jokic — who greets individual accolades like a pebble in his shoe — will be mollified by winning his third MVP if the Timberwolves end up pulling off the second-round upset.
His struggles have been almost unprecedented. What has always made Jokic so mesmerizing is that no single type of defence seemed to affect him. Send multiple defenders? No worries, he’ll move the ball at the right time and to the right place, creating open look after open look for his teammates. It’s why he’s widely considered not only the best playmaking big man of all time, but one of the best passers the NBA has ever seen, regardless of position.
Try to cover him with a single defender and take away his passing options? Fine, he’ll bull his way to the basket and finish with his grab bag of floaters and jump hooks. If he fails with that, he’ll just tip his own rebounds like a modern-day Malone.
Jokic is the NBA’s best problem solver, able to find cracks in a defence the way water finds its way into a leaky basement.
But against the Timberwolves, the always unflappable Jokic looks flapped, connecting on just 42 per cent of his field-goal attempts and turning the ball over 11 times in two games. Minnesota has been able to slow Jokic with its trio of big men — Naz Reid, Karl Anthony-Towns and four-time defensive player of the year Rudy Gobert (although Gobert missed Game 2 while attending the birth of his child).
The Timberwolves held Jokic to just 48.5 per cent from the floor during the regular season but have ramped up their intensity even more in the first two games of this series. Making matters more complicated for Jokic has been the way the Timberwolves have been able to use their trio of elite perimeter defenders — Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards — to make life miserable for Jamal Murray, who has been the crafty Serbian’s dance partner in one of the most elegant two-man games in recent memory. Murray — to some degree limited by a calf injury — has been eliminated as an offensive threat through two games, as his 9-of-32 shooting line would indicate.
Jokic is accustomed to making basketball magic. It’s why he’s earned his status as a future Hall of Famer, barely two months after his 29th birthday.
But turning around the Nuggets series against Minnesota could end up being his most difficult trick yet. Falling short will make for a less-than-ideal reign as three-time MVP, but the ensuing awkwardness shouldn’t take away from his status as basketball’s latest all-time great, even if it’s a bit awkward at the moment.