The triple-double is one of the rarer statistical achievements in all of basketball. When Oscar Robertson averaged one over the full 1961-62 season, it was seen as a totally irreplicable anomaly. For more than five decades, they were right. Russell Westbrook joined him in the triple-double club during the 2016-17 season, and wound up entering it four different times. But Westbrook and Robertson are guards, positioned well to accumulate stats because of how frequently they have the ball.
Nikola Jokić is a center, and as of Friday, is the first one in NBA history to average a triple-double for a full season. With 26 points, 16 rebounds and 13 assists, Jokić clinched the feat regardless of what happens on Sunday. Historically speaking, the notion of a center doing this felt almost impossible. Only two other centers in NBA history have averaged even 10 points, 10 rebounds and six assists per game: Wilt Chamberlain and Domantas Sabonis. Big men typically don’t have the ball enough to do what Jokić has now done.
Speaking of which, Jokić is ironically the best outside shooter in the triple-double club. He will become the first member to shoot above 40% from 3-point range in a triple-double season, assuming there is no catastrophe on Sunday (though in fairness, Robertson played before the 3-point shot existed). No player in NBA history, regardless of total points or assists, has ever averaged 10 rebounds and made 40% of their 3-pointers. Jokić, as a center, has now done so. It is the anomaly of all anomalies, quite possibly the greatest statistical offensive season any player has ever had.
And in all likelihood, it is not going to be rewarded with a fourth MVP trophy for Jokić. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is at least a -2,500 favorite at every major book at the moment. In the final MVP straw poll conducted by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, Gilgeous-Alexander collected 77 first-place votes to Jokić’s 23. That came before Jokić’s Nuggets fired head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth.
The odds, in other words, are not in Jokić’s favor. Gilgeous-Alexander’s Thunder currently have an 18-game lead on Jokić and the Nuggets, and Gilgeous-Alexander is the superior defender, to say nothing of the stellar offensive season he has put together. In truth, this has been one of the best MVP races of all time. Either would be a deserving winner. But interim Nuggets coach David Adelman said it best: This race is also going to have an incredible loser.
“If he doesn’t win the MVP, it’s the greatest season of all time not to win MVP,” Adelman said on Friday.
That’s almost certainly true, but at the very least, Jokić will have that in common with his fellow members of the triple-double club. Robertson lost the 1962 MVP award to Bill Russell. Westbrook won MVP in only one of his four triple-double seasons. If Jokić doesn’t win the award this time around, the six triple-double seasons the league has ever seen will have only produced one MVP, and the center position’s first ever triple-double average won’t collect a trophy despite the same player earning three of the past four without ever having done so.
Whether it’s Gilgeous-Alexander’s greatness, voter fatigue or a combination of both, that would have felt almost unfathomable as recently as the beginning of the season.
