The Definitive Case For Nikola Jokic For 2024-25 NBA MVP Part 1: The GOSOAT
The Greatest Offensive Season In NBA History
This is Part One of a 3-part series on Jokic’s case. Today is just mostly stats and description. Part two is mostly film on his offense and defense, and Part 3 will be on his impact on winning, and the context of Denver’s season and the firing of Michael Malone.
Let’s set the bar impossibly high and see if we can clear it.
How would you determine the greatest offensive season in NBA history? What would you examine? Team success? Production by efficiency? Impact metrics? Highlights?
Someone has had the greatest offensive season in NBA history. How do you determine that?
As with most things in the NBA, I believe it has to be a complicated matrix that encompasses everything. It can’t be numbers that lack enough context, or eye tests that have too much specific memory context. It can’t just be efficiency, production, or impact. It has to be all of them at once.
Trying to find a list of the best offensive seasons in history is difficult because of era adjustment. For example, nine of the 21 seasons with 30 points and at least 7.5 assists have come within the past eight seasons.
Indeed, it’s a legendary time offensively in terms of skill, but there’s also way more assists now because of the spacing of the floor.
But if we raise it to 29.5 points and 9.5 assists1, we get this list… and Jokic’s efficiency tops them all.
It’s the highest PER season for a 30-points-per-game scorer in history. That doesn’t mean it’s the best. PER is Player Efficiency Rating in name and definition. It’s an efficiency metric best used to describe how much you did and how efficiently you did it when you were on the floor. It is also weighted by rebounds, which leans Jokic’s way and has nothing to do with offense. But still!
There are a few other seasons I think you have to consider, but this was the best list I could construct for the best seasons in NBA history.
Luka Doncic 2023-24
Michael Jordan 1990-1991
LeBron James 2012-2013
James Harden 2018-2019
Stephen Curry 2015-16
Nikola Jokic 2024-25
You likely have objections to various players included or not included here. See this subnote.2
Jokic leads that group in assists per game and field goal efficiency per game. Jordan averaged 6 assists and again, while playmaking was much different then, he just wasn’t the passer and creator. He’s the GOAT (or 2nd-GOAT, whatever) but let’s bump him.
LeBron had the second-lowest usage3 while putting up 27-7 on 57-41-75 splits on a team where he shared the floor with Dwyane Wade.
Harden’s 36-8 on 44-37-88 is just… what the hell is that. But again, we’re talking a 2.5 assist gap with Jokic and Jokic, somehow, shoots better from three.
Just based on shot efficiency, Jokic has him by margin. Same with Luka, whose 34-10 on 49-38-79 season last year would have won him the MVP if the Mavericks hadn’t had so many injuries.
And then there’s Curry 2016.
Both averaged 30 points. Curry played more games and fewer minutes. Assuming Jokic plays the final three game of the Nuggets season as I write this, Curry will still likely finish with roughly 300 more total points. Curry averaged more shot attempts in fewer minutes, but edges Jokic by 0.3 percentage points of efficiency.
Curry edges out Jokic by 0.3 in Offensive BPM, 1 point in Offensive EPM, 0.6 percentage points in TrueShooting Percentage. It’s razor-thin… before we consider that, Jokic averaged three more assists per game this season than Curry.
I still lean Curry, because, well, he made 402 3-pointers. Four hundred. And Two. There was nothing like that season. But it is close. And if we’re going to step back from feelings and look at, again, production x efficiency x impact, it’s Jokic.
Jokic is the only player in NBA history to average 30-10 on 60% eFG and 40% from 3. The only one. No one’s ever done it. 4
You can prefer Jordan ‘91 because of how it felt, or Luka last year because of sheer volume of production. But at least with most of these seasons, you can find “Yeah he scored well, but he wasn’t an elite playmaker.” Or “Yeah, he dished and scored, but the efficiency was underwhelming.”
There’s no hole in Jokic’s offensive game. For a long stretch of time, he was top-five in 3-point percentage… as a center. Even on lower volume, that’s nuts.
He’s third in points per game this season, second in assists per game this season, and seventh in eFG% this season with all the players above him centers who just dunk the ball on pick-and-rolls or slam putbacks. 5
Oh, also on that list? His teammate Christian Braun. And Christian will tell you that his efficiency is a direct result of Jokic’s passing. So in a way, Jokic is responsible for two of the top-ten eFG% performances this season.6
With Jokic, you can’t find literally anything he cannot do. Wilt couldn’t space the floor because the idea of three-pointers was insane then and did not exist. Curry can’t bully you in the post, and while he’s an insane finisher, it’s because of the gravity his shooting creates; he’s not an amazing finisher through contact (though he’s good). LeBron’s jumper has always waxed and waned. Luka’s jumper is extremely volatile.
Harden… OK, Harden had everything outside of the post-up. And Jordan even had that.
I’m not saying Jokic is as good of a scorer as MJ (he’s not) or Harden (that one’s debatable) or as good of a shooter as Curry (he’s not). But he’s within range of the best at all these things while being twice the playmaker of any of them outside of Harden.
I want to stress the versatility of his scoring:
Among players who have shot six jumpers a game, Jokic is 8th in eFG% at 60.1%. For context, Kevin Durant is at 60.4%. Among the 116 players to take six jumpers per game, Jokic is 8th in efficiency.
More after the break.
