The NBA GOAT debate almost always settles on two names: Michael Jordan and LeBron James. It may soon be time to add a third name to that discussion: Nikola Jokić.
The three-time MVP turns 30 today, which provides an excellent benchmark to look back at the first 10 years of his NBA career and match his resume against Jordan’s and James’ at the same age. I’ll also look at what he might need to do to in order to truly enter the elite conversation.
Nikola Jokić at Age 30
Unlike Jordan and James, who were both highly-touted prospects entering the NBA, Jokić was relatively anonymous before making the leap to the world’s best basketball league. In fact, the broadcast was airing a Taco Bell commercial for the quesarito when his selection popped across the ticker: “Nikola Jokic PF – Serbia”. He then spent the 2014-15 season with Mega Basket in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, while Andrew Wiggins won Rookie of the Year. For his first three years in the United States, Jokić was a good but not great starting center, averaging 14.9 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game across 228 games (187 starts) between 2015 and 2018.
Then he exploded on what has arguably been the greatest prime of any player in NBA history. Over his last seven seasons, he has finished in the Top 10 in MVP voting every season, winning the award in three of the last four full seasons and finishing as the runner-up to Joel Embiid in the other. He has led the league in offensive and total win shares each of the past five seasons, as well as offensive and defensive box plus-minus in each of the past four seasons. His Player Efficiency Rating, win shares per 48 minutes, offensive box plus-minus, and total box plus-minus figures are all career NBA records. This season, he’s just 0.2 points per game shy of becoming the third player ever to average a 30-point triple-double over the course of a full season and has +350 MVP odds at DraftKings Sportsbook.
His playmaking — he’s universally considered to be the greatest passer ever at the center position — has made Denver’s offense unstoppable. Since the 2018-19 season, the first season of Jokić’s prime, the Nuggets have never finished worse than seventh in offensive rating, and this season, Denver is pouring in 119.5 points per 100 possessions, the third-best in the league and the fifth-highest in NBA history. For his career, the Nuggets have an offensive rating of 126.4 with him on the court, and they’ve been 13.2 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court than off of it. For his career, he ranks 28th in field goal percentage, 13th in total rebounding percentage, and 24th in assist percentage. By Player Efficiency Rating, Jokić has the two greatest seasons of all time, this season and 2021-22.
Michael Jordan at Age 30
Jordan’s stardom was evident from the second he laced up basketball shoes for the first time. He was a McDonald’s All-American as a senior at Emsley A. Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in three seasons at the University of North Carolina, he averaged 17.7 points, 5.0 rebounds, 1.8 assists, and 1.7 steals per game, winning a national title in his freshman season and winning the 1983-84 Wooden Award, given annually to college basketball’s best player. Then, after being the third overall pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, he averaged 28.2 points per game, winning Rookie of the Year and finishing sixth in MVP voting, one of just 14 players since 1980 to be considered for the league’s most prestigious honor as a rookie.
Like Jokić and James, Jordan was a Hall of Fame shoo-in by the time he turned 30 on February 17, 1993. To that point in his career, he had three MVP’s, a Defensive Player of the Year award, and was well on his way to winning his seventh consecutive scoring title. By the end of his age-29 season, he was also in the process of finishing off his third straight title, the first of two three-peats that he would complete in his career, with a sterling 6-0 record in the NBA Finals. The counting stats were incredible; by the end of his age-29 season — which included 29 games as a 30-year-old — he had amassed 21,541 points, 4,219 rebounds, 3,935 assists, and 1,815 steals.
In his first nine seasons in the NBA, Jordan led the league in win shares in seven consecutive seasons. He then retired for two years to play Minor League Baseball before returning and leading the league in the stat for the first two full seasons after his return. Jordan also topped the NBA in offensive box plus-minus, total box plus-minus, Value over Replacement Player, and Player Efficiency Rating each of those seven seasons. He finished in the top 15 four times in true shooting percentage despite having the highest career usage rate in NBA history.
LeBron James at Age 30
Like Jordan, James was a basketball prodigy who fulfilled his potential, and then some. After his senior season at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio — in which he won his third Ohio state championship and was named the Gatorade National Player of the Year for the second time — his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers made him the first overall pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. He made an immediate impact in the league, averaging 20.9 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game, winning Rookie of the Year and finishing ninth in MVP voting.
By the time he turned 30 on December 30, 2014, James’ resume popped off the page. He won four MVP’s in a five-year span while finishing third behind Derrick Rose and Dwight Howard in 2010-11, a feat that Jokić would better if he pips Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the award this season. James had also been named to an All-NBA Team 10 times, including six straight First Team appearances. In the first 11 years of James’ career, he reached five NBA Finals, winning titles in 2011-12 and 2012-13 with the Miami Heat. His counting totals — not counting the 29 games that he played as a 29-year-old in 2014-15 — were even better than Jordan’s: 23,170 points, 6,086 rebounds, and 5,790 assists. James has had more career points at every single age than any other player in NBA history.
By the end of his 11th season, James had led the league in Player Efficiency Rating in six straight seasons, offensive win shares four times, total win shares five times, and Value Over Replacement Player in eight consecutive seasons. The 0.318 win shares per 48 minutes that he recorded in 2008-09 are more than Jordan has ever recorded and the sixth-highest in NBA history, behind only three seasons from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain’s 1963-64 campaign, and Jokić’s 0.334 this season. To that point in his career, James had ranked in the top 20 in true shooting percentage in five different seasons, one more than Jordan and one fewer than Jokić. James’ teams were 11.2 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than off of it.
How Jokić Can Catch Jordan and James
Ultimately, Jokić’s GOAT case will rest on how many more years he plays and how many more championships he wins. Because he played his first season in Serbia and took a few seasons to ascend to superstardom, his counting stats — 15,597 points, 7,866 rebounds, and 5,169 assists — lag behind James’ and Jordan’s stats at the same age. Because James is still in All-Star form in his 22nd season and has not indicated that he plans to retire this offseason, his scoring record is likely more or less untouchable, and his 11,440 assists will be tough for Jokić to catch, too. But the Serbian big already has more rebounds than Jordan and should pass James’ 11,556, too. By advanced numbers, his five-year peak holds up against either player.
Jokić is just one of nine players with three or more regular-season MVP’s, but in order to catch Jordan and James in the upper echelon, he’ll likely need one or two more, given that Jordan won five awards (and is the trophy’s namesake) and James has four. It’s fairly unlikely to happen this season, barring an injury or drastic drop-off in form by either Gilgeous-Alexander or the Thunder, but as long as Jokić is healthy, he should be considered among the favorites for the award every season for the foreseeable future. It won’t be easy — Gilgeous-Alexander is 26, Luka Dončić is 25, and Victor Wembanyama is 21 — but I’d be shocked if he never won another MVP. That said, it would’ve also seemed unfathomable on James’ 30th birthday that he’d won his last MVP award.
Jokić’s biggest hole in his resume is his lack of playoff success. James is tied with Abdul-Jabbar for the most Finals appearances of any player besides Bill Russell and Sam Jones from the 1960’s Boston Celtics, winning four of his 10 series, while Jordan is 6-0 in the Finals. Meanwhile, Jokić has made the Finals just once — winning the 2022-23 title, 4-1, over the Heat — and blowing a 20-point lead to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinals last season will hurt his legacy somewhat. A clearly fatigued Jokić shot just seven-for-16 from the field and two-for-eight from beyond the arc in the second half of that game.
Can the Nuggets win a title this season?
Denver has a chance this season — its +1400 odds are the fifth-best of any team, behind Oklahoma City, Boston, Cleveland, and the New York Knicks — but it’s slim. Although the Nuggets are the third seed in the West, they are 8.5 games behind the Thunder, who are posting the second-best net rating in NBA history, and James’ Lakers just landed Dončić in a trade, giving him a puncher’s chance at his fifth championship. Denver and Oklahoma City have split their season series so far, and they’ll play each other on back-to-back nights on March 9 and 10 in a possible conference championship preview. Sure, the Thunder haven’t historically done a great job of handling Jokić — he’s averaging a 24-point triple-double in his last 10 games against them — but the Nuggets are hardly without weaknesses.
This season, Denver has merely the 16th-ranked defense. Since the 2000-2001 season, only three teams have ever won a championship without a Top-10 defense: the 2000-01 Lakers, who had Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal and were an elite defensive unit in the playoffs; the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors, who required fluky second-half shooting by the Houston Rockets just to survive the Western Conference semifinals; and the 2022-23 Nuggets. They could turn it around this season, and their offense is most certainly good enough, but a team that allows the eighth-most points and most assists per game usually isn’t a title contender.
I’m not sure Jokić’s supporting pieces are good enough, either. Jamal Murray still hasn’t taken the next step and, by both traditional and advanced stats, is more or less the same player he was two seasons ago — an inconsistent microwave scorer and a liability on defense. Michael Porter Jr. is an efficient shooter, but doesn’t provide much besides scoring, and while Christian Braun has improved a lot, he still doesn’t fully compensate for the losses of Bruce Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Jeff Green, all of whom provided both offensive versatility and perimeter defense to that championship squad. Aaron Gordon, too, has somewhat regressed since the championship season. And Russell Westbrook — as heart-warming as his late-career revival has been — is a notorious playoff choker.
Still, despite his roster’s shortcomings, this is one of the better shots Jokić will have, and if he fails to win this year, he might not have that many more years to get it done. Jokić, at least outwardly, doesn’t live and breathe basketball like James does, returning every summer to his native Serbia to drive horses. For what it’s worth, Jokić has said that he’ll continue to suit up as long as he can play at a high level, and his game — which might be the least athleticism-based of any player in NBA history — should age well. It’ll also be hard to walk away from a projected five-year, $404 million extension that he’s eligible to sign next offseason.
In order to truly challenge Jordan and James atop the basketball pantheon, Jokić probably needs to win — at minimum — one more MVP and three more championships, bringing his total to four of each. He might also need to become the 10th player to score 30,000 career points (James Harden will get there at some point before him), pass James in rebounds, and catch Oscar Robertson for 10th in assists after Westbrook and Harden pass him first. If his accolades and counting stats are impressive enough, his advanced numbers might get him over the line.
Should we expect it from him?
Of course not.
But nobody expected a seven-footer born amid a bloody war in a small town in rural Serbia to ever sniff this debate either, probably not even Jokić himself. Who am I to count him out?
