Nikola Jokić thinks he’s playing ‘the best basketball of my life’ — and he may be right

In the aftermath of another monstrous performance — 35 points on 15-for-20 shooting, 18 rebounds, eight assists, a steal and a block with just one turnover in 40 peerless minutes — to earn the Denver Nuggets a split of their back-to-back set against the West-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, Nikola Jokić wasn’t particularly interested in handicapping the state of this season’s NBA Most Valuable Player race between him and OKC superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Not especially surprising, coming from a player who’s spent the last half-decade both vying for the crown of the best player on the planet while also never seeming all that thrilled about the hyperfocus and attendant toxicity of the annual discourse surrounding the biggest individual honor the sport has to offer.

Jokić was, however, willing to engage in a moment of self-reflection about where he finds himself as he nears the end of his 10th NBA season — which, in his view, is a peak higher than any he’s reached before.

“This is my third or fourth year in a row [in MVP contention], so I’m really — I don’t know. I cannot control it,” Jokić told reporters after Denver’s 140-127 win over the Thunder on Monday. “Obviously, I think I’m playing the best basketball of my life. So if that’s enough, it’s enough. If not, [Gilgeous-Alexander] deserves it. He’s really amazing.”

“The best basketball of my life” is an awfully lofty perch for a player who is one of just nine in NBA history with three MVP trophies on his mantel. (The other eight: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, LeBron James, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Moses Malone. Pretty good company.) But as dominant and impressive as Jokić was in those three MVP seasons — and in the 2022-23 campaign, when he finished second to Joel Embiid in MVP voting before going on to dominate the postseason and lead the Nuggets to their first NBA championship — the numbers say that the big fella might have a point here.

Jokić is posting career highs in scoring and playmaking, averaging 28.9 points and 10.5 assists per game to go with his 13 rebounds — which, yes, puts him on pace to join Oscar Robertson and teammate Russell Westbrook as the third player in NBA history to average a triple-double for a full season. He’s also taking (4.5) and making (1.9) more 3-pointers than ever, and knocking them down at a career-best 43% clip, helping produce an elite true shooting percentage (which factors in 2-point, 3-point and free-throw accuracy) of 66.2%.

That’s actually not the highest mark of Jokić’s career; he posted an absurd 70.1 TS% in ’22-23. His usage rate is about 2% higher this season than back then, though, and maintaining such an elevated level of scoring efficiency while shouldering a heavier offensive burden is awfully impressive … especially when you add it to how increasingly dominant Jokić has been as a facilitator.

Jokic is creating 27.2 Nuggets points per game via assist, according to Second Spectrum, which is a career high. (Better assist-to-turnover ratio than ever, too.) He’s also creating 10.6 points per game via screen assist, which — say it with me — is a career high. Add them to the points Jokić is scoring himself, and the Serbian giant is generating a ginormous 65.8 points per 36 minutes, using the Points Created metric cooked up by Zach Kram, now of ESPN, which — guys, check your reports or I’m gonna point at Pete — is a career high.

Taylor Snarr’s estimated plus-minus pegs Jokić as adding 7.8 points per 100 possessions’ worth of individual impact on the offensive end, which leads the league and outpaces all previous Jokić seasons. (I wanted to try something other than “career high.”) His 32.3 player efficiency rating is within hailing distance of his high-water mark of 32.8 in 2021-22, his second MVP season; his .316 win shares per 48 minutes not only tops everything he’s done before, but would be a top-10 mark in NBA history. (Gilgeous-Alexander’s .315 would be 11th. Whew.)

Thanks largely to Jokić’s ability to calmly and consistently deliver organic, fair-trade, farm-to-table buckets, the Nuggets are scoring a torrid 125.8 points per 100 possessions in his floor time — the most efficient offense of his tenure in Colorado, and the driving force behind Denver remaining among the ranks of title hopefuls. If you can annihilate one of the best defenses in recent memory to the tune of 1.4 points per possession on 61/56/90 shooting splits, then you can beat anybody.

“We didn’t win a lot [before Monday] against the top teams,” Jokić told reporters after the win. “… Hopefully we can show ourselves that we can be good when we need it the most.”

The Nuggets can reach that level because it’s where Jokić lives. But breathing rarefied air for years doesn’t mean you can’t keep climbing.

“Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a great player, and if he wins his first MVP, he’s deserving of that,” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone told reporters on Monday. “My thing is this: If you didn’t know that Nikola won three MVPs, and I put Player A and Player B on paper, and you had no idea that the guy who’s averaging a triple-double, the guy who’s top-three in the major statistical categories [had already won three] … he wins the MVP 10 times out of 10. And if you don’t think so, I think you guys are all bulls****ing.”