The NBA community has been thrown into a border war between respect for the eye test and the use of analytic tools by the impending news that Nikola Joki will be awarded his second-consecutive Most Valuable Player award. Jokic has won back-to-back games for the NBA. This isn't a rant against the existence of advanced analytics. I am not saying that Jokic isn't a cornerstone player or that it doesn't have a place in basketball analysis.
Joki's counting statistics are almost the same as his averages. Last season, Joki had an average of 26.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 8.3 assists per game. He had 27.1 points, 13.8 rebound and 7.9 assists on 58.8% shooting. The timing couldn't be worse as Joki will be etched into official NBA history as the 13th player to win back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards. The tide of the Philadelphia 76ers series against the East's No. 1 seed has been shifted by his win over the big man.
Joki won the award for the second year in a row even though his peer spent most of the season battling. In the absence of Michael Porter Jr. and Jamal Murray, the Nuggets finished sixth in the Western Conference and their.585 winning percentage is the sixth-worst in league history. Joki led the NBA in win shares, win shares per 48 minutes, Defensive Box Plus/Minus, and finished top-four in assist percentage and VORP.
One of the more popular advanced statistics was VORP. VORP is a box score estimate of the points per 100 team possessions that a player contributed over a replacement level player. The VORP of Jokic is the 14th-highest in NBA history.
Joki led the league by a chasm that would lead you to believe that Antetokounmpo was his boss. If the voters pulled their heads out of the sand long enough, they would have noticed that Antetokounmpo leveled up for the stretch run and staked his claim as the best basketball player on the planet, while Jokic was barely enough to get Denver into the playoffs.
Joki was outplayed by one of his candidates in the twilight of the season. Jokic's play dipped and Denver nearly plummeted into the Play-in Tournament because Antetokounmpo leveled up. Antetokounmpo, the previous player to win back-to-backMVPs, never became a serious contender. In a straw poll between February 17 and March 29th, Joki was the winner, even though he was playing neck-and- neck with Embiid in certain metrics. In the first half of the season, Embiid kept the 76ers afloat with the help of Tyrese Maxey andSeth Curry.
This race never had advanced defensive prowess played into it. Joki had a greater impact on the defensive end than Rudy Gobert. Gobert is the best defender in the NBA, Joki is the best defender in the NBA, and Antetokounmpo is the best defender in the NBA. The NBA's flawed defensive statistics caused a narrative to be created that Jokic was a better defender than Gobert and Embiid. The NBA community has meaning to the award of the regular-season Most Valuable Player. The framing of Joki's case has legitimacy, but the narrative lacked soul. That is a travesty for him and the award.
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