![]() If Jokic's team were healthy, it is entirely possible that he would be a three-time defending champion right now. If we treat Antetokounmpo's measure of the league's best player as the one who is holding the trophy when the games stop, Jokic didn't really have a chance at that distinction because the players who were supposed to help him get there were injured. missed most of the 2021-22 season due to a back injury. Jamal Murray missed the end of the 2020-21 season and the entire 2021-22 season due to a torn ACL. A bit more experienced, perhaps, but his best-in-the-NBA metrics have all been more or less stable across the past three seasons. There's not much of an argument suggesting that Jokic is demonstrably better than he was two years ago, either. Curry became the first player in NBA history to score 50 points in a Game 7 six weeks ago. Antetokounmpo, in some ways, has even gotten better. When next season begins and the unofficial rankings start to pour in, Jokic is going to be at the top of every list.Īnd yet, it would be hard to argue that Curry or Antetokounmpo have gotten demonstrably worse than they were at the time of their championships. Unsurprisingly, the player who played the best basketball for most of the past three years is probably the best basketball player in the world. 1 seed in the Western Conference, and he has two trophies to show that he was the best regular-season player of 20. He likely would have been the best player in March and April as well if the Nuggets hadn't already clinched the No. He was the best player in the regular season from October through February. Jokic was the best player in the playoffs we just witnessed and it wasn't close. ![]() Any questions about his playoff viability boiled down to the defensive flaws that his limited mobility created, but at the very least, he's now proven that those vulnerabilities are at least not so great that they cannot be overcome. There is not a better passer on Earth than him and he just averaged 30 points per game across a playoff run. Jokic's case as the NBA's best offensive player is ironclad. These are some of the benchmarks we'd expect a "best player in the world" to hit. He'll enter next season as the reigning Finals MVP, and he's already won two regular-season MVP awards. "The best player in the world is the person that is the last one standing," Antetokounmpo said in September.īy this logic, the best player in the NBA is Nikola Jokic. He lost last season with sidekick Khris Middleton sidelined due to injury, and then he himself declared reigning Finals MVP Stephen Curry the new top dog. Giannis Antetokounmpo came one shoe size away from losing to Kevin Durant in 2021, but when he ultimately won the title, he seemingly grabbed the crown. Someone wins the championship, and that player is coronated as the league's new king. When the NBA lacks a prime Jordan or James, it tends to adopt a "what have you done for me lately?" attitude. What's so fascinating about the other type of debate is how similarly it is often treated to the first. Everyone else was fighting for second place. But the basketball world never bothered to doubt their station. The league may have ebbed and flowed around them. Michael Jordan held that same title for a similar period of time in the 1990s. LeBron James was the best player in basketball for at least a decade and possibly more. For most of the past 15 years or so, we've been limited to the far duller version. When it comes to naming the best player in the NBA, there are typically two kinds of debates.
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