Nikola Jokic is the only basketball player on earth who can put up 27 points, 20 rebounds, 11 assists and three steals and not even seem like he played extraordinarily well. Indeed, it was just another night at the office for the three-time MVP, albeit in a 126-114 Nuggets loss to the Cavaliers on Thursday.
That performance marked the 139th triple-double of Jokic’s career, which moves him past Magic Johnson and into sole possession of third place on the all-time list. Only Jokic’s current teammate, Russell Westbrook, and Oscar Robertson have more career triple-doubles with 200 and 181, respectively.
So what do we make of this made-for-Twitter triple-double business? For starters, it’s the easiest tweet and corresponding headline in history because we’re a species that is strangely fascinated with round numbers. Jokic, or any other player for that matter, could put up 20-10-9 in a game and nobody would care. Add that 10th rebound in, however, and suddenly it’s a much more noteworthy accomplishment. It’s the .299 vs. .300 hitter in baseball thing. The former is a nobody. The latter is a Hall of Famer. Stupid.
What’s also stupid are assists. They are, without question, the most misleading stat in basketball. Especially in the NBA, where assists are handed out like Halloween candy. I would bet good money that at least 20% of them are bogus, and even that feels conservative. A dude passes to another dude who does all the work of creating a shot for himself and an assist is credited. It happens all the time. So whatever assist number you see, subtract 20-30%, and that’s likely the more accurate number.
Staggering on-off splits better display Jokic’s dominance
It’s the spirit of the triple-double that matters. It says this is a multi-dimensional player who is controlling every part of a game, and nobody does that better than Jokic. He is the sun around which Denver rotates and is in the midst of the best season of his career.
Obviously, that’s saying a lot about a guy who has won three MVPs.
Forget the triple-double on Thursday; the guy is averaging a triple-double at 29.9 points, 13.4 rebounds and 10.4 assists per game. Those scoring and assists averages are the best of his career. Jokic is doing this while making a career-high 50% of his 3-pointers. He’s the runaway MVP through the first quarter of the season if for no other reason than the cliff the Nuggets fall off when he leaves the court.
More than the round box-score numbers, these are the marks by which we need to be floored. Seriously, for one guy to be the difference between the best and worst offense in the NBA is pretty wild. We have seen extreme on-off splits before, and over enough of a sample, it only happens with the best of the best.
The Warriors have long gone from an elite offense to a pathetic one without Stephen Curry. It’s arguably even more stark with Jokic and the Nuggets, who entered Thursday outscoring opponents by 14 points per 100 possessions with Jokic on the floor while being outscored by 17.8 per 100 when he’s off, per Cleaning the Glass.
Do the math, and the Nuggets are 31.8 points better with Jokic on the floor, or put another way, 31.8 points worse with him off.
That is a staggering number that speaks to his unparalleled dominance. And yeah, along the way he has also piled up a bunch of triple-doubles.
