Nikola Jokic is one of the most divisive players in the NBA. He divides “eye-test” versus “numbers” people in ways few players do. By the numbers he looks like a star, but he’s not even in the top-10 of Western Conference front-court players in All-Star voting. Jokic’s advanced stats are not only treated with skepticism by Charles Barkely-esque caricatures of anti-analytic ideology, but also by the majority of the younger, numbers-friendly media.

According to this year’s flurry of pre-season player rankings, Jokic is somewhere between the 15th and 25th best player in the NBA. Sports Illustrated had him 25th. ESPN was highest on him, ranking him 16th. Bleacher Report placed him 21st overall. He was 23rd on The Ringer. Ditto for SB Nation. Even in SB Nation’s ranking of the top-101 players in 2021, where a 22-year old like Jokic should have a huge edge, he only came in 14th.

(Note: A whole separate post could be done on what it means to “rank” NBA players, but we’ll avoid getting into that for now.)

All of those sites’ writers and rankers are smart basketball fans who use a combination of game watching and looking at numbers to evaluate players. The fact they even have Jokic as a top-25 player is a testament to this. Denver’s coach Mike Malone apparently doesn’t even think he is the best player on the Nuggets! (more on this later).

Yet, Jokic’s 15-25 ranking does not match what advanced analytics suggest about him. From a purely numbers perspective, Nikola Jokic looks like a top-10 player in the NBA. Two of the best all-in-one metrics currently in the public domain are ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus (RPM), and Basketball-Reference’s Box-Plus Minus (BPM).

For those looking for a good explainer on what RPM is and why they should care about it, check this piece out. If I were to briefly summarize it, RPM uses lineup data and competition and teammate adjustments to estimate how much a player helps or hurts their team when on the court. BPM is simply a box score based stat that tries to predict adjusted plus/minus.

***Unless otherwise noted, all On/Off data comes from Ben Falk’s Cleaning the Glass.

According to RPM, Jokic was the 9th most impactful NBA player his rookie year, 6th most last year, and is 8th so far this year. The only other players to be top-10 each of the last three seasons are Lebron James, Stephen Curry, and Russell Westbrook. By BPM, Jokic placed 11th in 2015-16, 5th in 2016-17, and 7th in 2017-18 (so far). Only five other players have been top-11 in BPM each of these seasons: Lebron, Curry, Westbrook, James Harden, and Kyle Lowry (who a similar article should be written about considering if he is as good as his team impact stats suggest, how to reconcile his regular season advanced stats with his playoff performance, and the visual cues we may be missing when watching him).

That type of year-over-year consistency is crucial. All-in-one metrics like RPM and BPM should not simply be taken at face value as player rankings. There is too much noise, luck, and error involved. However, when someone displays the year-over-year results Jokic has it can not be dismissed. There is a reason the only other players to hit the same thresholds are so highly regarded.

The way I look at RPM is you have to be able to explain why the numbers do or don’t match your thesis (this applies to all stats but particularly On/Off based ones). For example, why is it that the Cavs are only marginally better with Lebron on-the-floor than off it this season?

In Jokic’s case, at this point, the burden of proof should be why isn’t he a top-10 player. Not why he is. Because the data is clear. Nikola Jokic has a top-10 in the NBA impact on his team

Now, there are a variety of reasons why RPM can overrate someone. Let’s go through them, one-by-one, to see if Jokic is being overrated by the numbers. These pitfalls overlap some and I may be missing other smaller concerns, but they are generally the main reasons why a player’s RPM could misrepresent their “true” ability.

Small Sample

The results of an NBA possession are often not due to all ten players on the court. If a player checks into the game and a minute later an opponent gets called for a technical foul that will help the player’s +/-. Unless the incoming player did something to draw the tech they wouldn’t have done anything to “earn” those points. But their On/Off rating would end up being helped, and thereby so would their RPM.

This is one example, but there are countless ways for a player’s +/- to be impacted without them doing anything to help or hurt their team. The smaller a player’s minute sample, the more likely this is to occur. For Jokic, this is obviously not the case. He has played 4,789 minutes over the past two and a half seasons. Small sample concerns can safely be disregarded. (All of the following issues are in a way small sample issues, but this is the only issue I couldn’t characterize as anything other than a sample size concern.)

Individual Hot Streak

Similarly, the way a player shoots, or even plays as a whole, is not always representative of their “true” ability. For example, Jayson Tatum is shooting 46.2% from three so far this year. Tatum is certainly a good shooter. Possibly even a better than 40% from deep “true” talent. But it is highly unlikely he is quite as good a shooter as he has been thus far.

RPM doesn’t have a way of accounting for this, and players who are in a cold or hot streak get under or overrated. Again, this doesn’t apply to Jokic. Jokic’s metric performance has been consistent over three years, and none of his detractors are claiming that he’s simply on a hot streak of individual play.

Team or Opponent Shooting Luck

One way On/Off data for individuals can be misleading is if his team or opponents run hot or cold during his play. It may be that when a certain player is in the game his teammates happen to shoot beyond their true ability from the free throw line or opponents happen to shoot way worse from behind the arc.

Nylon Calculus’s Jacob Goldstein recently wrote a great article on this topic. If you’re looking for more explanation of On/Off luck, I highly recommend it. Even better, Jacob released luck adjusted On/Off data for all players and teams going back to 2002 (link to data is in the bottom of his article).

According to Jacob’s data, Jokic’s On/Off net rating (how good the Nuggets have been with him on the court versus off it) has been 1.9 points per 100 possessions “lucky” this season, was 2.3 pts/100 lucky last year, and was 2.7 pts/100 unlucky two years ago.

Unfortunately, there isn’t publicly available luck adjusted On/Off RPM out there. So, it is hard to gauge how much different Jokic would look. Jacob’s data suggests Jokic would take a hit in each of the past two seasons, and actually improve on his rookie year numbers.

This is a negative data point, but isn’t enough to truly make a case against Jokic. Right now, Jokic’s RPM numbers paint the picture of a top-5/6 player over the past three seasons. The luck adjustment would likely him knock him down some, but it seems unlikely he would stop looking like at least a borderline top-10 player (if someone has data to the contrary I would love to see).

Additionally, over at Ben Falk’s fantastic Cleaning the Glass he gets rid of “garbage time” in his data. It needs to be more rigorously tested whether this actually helps predictability, but it looks like a data point in Jokic’s favor. Jokic’s garbage time adjusted On/Off differential was +1.2 points per 100 possessions better than his standard On/Off in 2015-16, +2.1 pts/100 better last year, and is a whopping +4.6 pts/100 better so far this year. Jokic’s On/Off data is being unfairly hurt by his garbage time performance, and this effect could offset however lucky he has gotten with team and opponent shooting over the past two seasons.

Box Score Prior Over-influence

RPM is not a strict adjusted plus/minus. In addition to plus/minus data it also uses a statistical prior based on box-score data that changes the player’s rating. Doing so has shown to be more predictive than simply using lineup data. For a further explanation of the box score prior see here. Nonetheless, in some cases (the minority but still a significant number) the box score prior actually hurts RPM because the player’s box score numbers are misleading and the On/Off data tells the true story.

This seems like a potentially convincing argument against Jokic. The box score prior is something similar to BPM, which we’ve already seen Jokic looks good in. However, Jokic’s On/Off data is just as impressive as his box score numbers. Jokic’s (garbage time adjusted) On/Off differential is in the 97th percentile this year, was in the 97th percentile last year, and was in the 94th percentile his rookie year. That’s not what you’d see from someone who is being unfairly helped by box score data.

Collinearity

One of the classic problems with adjusted plus/minus is collinearity, or when two players always share the court. If two players are almost always on the court together, RPM doesn’t know who to give the credit to for the team’s good or bad performance (the box score prior helps but does not completely solve this issue).

An average player can end up looking better than they actually are if they always share the court with a great player, or can look worse than they actually are if they always play with a crappy one. Once again though, this is not a reason Jokic is being overrated. How do we know? The easiest way to determine if a player is being dragged up or down by a specific teammate is to look at the lineup pair data for them with each of their teammates (i.e. how a team does with both players on the court, with one of them on, with the other on, and with neither on).

If a player has a good net rating when paired with a certain player they play most of their minutes with, but a bad one without them, it is a sign they’re being bolstered by that player. This season, the Nuggets point differential when Jokic is on and any other specific teammate is off is plus five points per 100 possessions or better for every teammate. Even when both Jamal Murray and Gary Harris are off the court (Harris and Murray have the other two best On/Off’s on the Nuggets), the Nuggets still beat teams by 4.8 points per 100 possessions as long as Jokic is on the court. Thus, Jokic is clearly the driving force behind the Nuggets success.

Replaceability

Another issue RPM sometimes runs into is when the gap between a player and their backup is particularly large or small. A great example is actually Jokic’s teammate’s, Jamal Murray and Emmanuel Mudiay. From a box score perspective, Murray is having a nice but unspectacular season. His BPM of -0.3 is solid for a second year player, but nothing special.

Yet, the Nuggets are a massive 12.2 points per 100 possessions better with Murray on the court than off it. That is in the 92nd percentile. Part of this is due to collinearity. Murray plays most of his minutes with Jokic, which makes him look better. However, a big reason Murray being on the court makes such a difference for the Nuggets is who enters the game when he leaves. In six of the seven most frequently used Nuggets lineups with Murray off-the-court, the point guard in his stead is Emmanuel Mudiay (in the other Will Barton is the point guard).

I would like to find a kinder way to say it, but Emmanuel Mudiay has been an incredibly damaging NBA player so far this year. His BPM of -4.1 is about as bad as it gets for a heavy minute rotation player. Last year, when the Nuggets also had Jameer Nelson to run point, Murray’s impact was no where near as large. Murray has improved, but he hasn’t improved that much. So, Murray’s net rating, and also his performance in adjusted plus/minus stats like RPM, is inflated by having such a gap in effectiveness between him and his backup.

For Jokic, if anything, one could make the argument he’s been hurt over the course of his career by the competency of his substitutes. The Nuggets’ primary center when Jokic was off-the-court his first year and a half was Jusuf Nurkic, and since then it has been Mason Plumlee. If neither of them are in at center the Nuggets have usually gone smaller with Kenneth Faried. Nurkic and Plumlee are both quality backup centers, and Faried as a third center is not bad. Jokic’s On/Off and RPM numbers are impressive in spite of his replacements. Not because of them.

Role Optimization

RPM, like all stats, only measures a player’s performance within their current role. Victor Oladipo didn’t look like a very useful player spotting up on the perimeter while Russell Westbrook ran pick-and-roll. Now that he’s been unleashed as a creator in Indiana, he looks like a dramatically different player.

Some players are used optimally in their roles, others are used quite sub-optimally. This ends up affecting their numbers, both advanced and traditional. This is what makes a dynamic team sport like basketball so hard to solve statistically. In baseball, players play almost identical roles as batters and fielders, regardless of which team they’re on. In basketball, a player’s role goes a long way in determining their usefulness on the court.

Is Jokic in a team context and role that enhances or diminishes his abilities? I think the answer is that he’s on a roster well-suited to complement him, but is oftentimes misused within the roster. Resultantly, Jokic is more close to being underrated by RPM due to his role than overrated.

The good: Jokic is the closest thing to a “point center” the NBA has maybe ever seen. The Nuggets can legitimately run their offense by having Jokic shuffle around from wing-to-wing handling the ball in dribble-handoffs while players cut and move around him. As a result, you don’t need or want ball dominant perimeter players around Jokic. Instead, you want a spaced floor of four other guys who can shoot, cut, and make quick decisions with the ball.

Murray is a great fit at point guard next to Jokic. He lacks typical point guard distribution skills but makes up for it with his ability to move off-the-ball and shoot off-movement. Those are precisely the skills that should be sacrificed and amplified next to Jokic. This is why Jameer Nelson and D.J. Augustin both looked good next to Jokic in the past.

Conversely, it is no surprise that Emmanuel Mudiay has struggled to succeed in Denver. If Mudiay is ever going to find his way in the NBA it is going to be as a high-usage pick-and-roll ball handler. But that is not what works next to Jokic.

In Murray, Harris, Wilson Chandler, Paul Millsap, Trey Lyles, and even Kenneth Faried (Jokic’s ability to space the floor and play in the short roll allows him to work next to a lob-catching 4) Denver has a good foundation of players who fit next to Jokic.

The bad: The Nuggets play in Jokic in many suboptimal lineups, and far too often stray from using Jokic in a point center roll even in the right lineups. Particularly, the Nuggets insistence on playing Jokic in double center lineups is infuriating.

Mason Plumlee is a decent fit next to Jokic offensively because of his lob catching and passing, but defensively the Nuggets are only hurting themselves by playing two true centers. Any time Plumlee is sharing the court with Jokic someone should be asking Mike Malone why Trey Lyles or at least Faried is not in the game instead.

Equally concerning is the Nuggets tendency to go away from Jokic as the fulcrum of their offense. Many times during this Nuggets season, he has been inexplicably uninvolved in their offense.

Some of this is to blame on his own ephemeral and occassionally passive personality. Mostly though, the blame lies on Coach Mike Malone’s shoulders.

Way up at the beginning of this piece I linked to a tweet where Mike Malone casually stated the Nuggets have been “missing their best player for the last 22 games.” Yes, Mike Malone believes Paul Millsap is the Nuggets best player.

This shouldn’t really come as a surprise. At the start of the season, one only needed to watch the Nuggets offense to see Millsap was considered the primary option, not Jokic. This brings us back to RPM.

Having gone over each potential area for error, it is hard to find any strong reason to disbelieve Jokic’s RPM numbers. He may have gotten a little lucky the past two seasons with teammate and opponent shooting he could not control, but not dramatically so. Moreover, he may be actually underrated by RPM due to the inclusion of garbage time, the quality of his backups, and his improper utilization by the Nuggets.

So, if his RPM is not dramatically misleading in anyway, what is it that everyone is missing? Why do analytics friendly writers still not quite believe his numbers? How could a basketball mind as knowledgable as Mike Malone, who gets to watch Jokic more than any other human being on the planet, actually believe he’s not the Nuggets best player?

The answer, and the reason it is relevant to The Stepien, is Jokic does many of the things our basketball eyes have the hardest time picking up on. Learning to appreciate a player like Jokic can lead to finding other players who make their team’s better in ways not immediately obvious.

Let’s start with the offense. Jokic’s offense is what stands out about him. The headliner is his passing. He is the greatest passing center the NBA has ever seen. Arvydas Sabonis and Bill Walton are in the conversation, but if you don’t believe me please just watch some highlights.

Jokic’s touch and craft around the rim are also undeniably otherworldly. He’s a career 58.3% shooter from two despite a solid diet of midrange shots and possibly the shortest vertical leap of any player in the NBA.

When you add in three-point range and good ball handling it’s not hard to see why Jokic is one of the league’s best offensive centers. The aspect of his offense that goes under appreciated is how he is able to direct the offense. His flashy passes deservedly get a lot of attention, but it is ability to make little plays like this that allow the Nuggets to run their offense through him.

At first glance, that’s a pretty standard play. Murray would’ve been able to get a similar look off a dribble-handoff from many other NBA centers. However, the precise timing and way he goes about it is unique to Jokic.

The second Jokic catches the ball he is pitching it back to Murray, not waiting for Murray to come over and collect the hand-off. Jokic uses this extra half-second of time to step into his screen a little bit. The quickness of the action throws Derrick Favors out of his typical rhythm. Ultimately, Murray likely only ends up with a few more inches of space than he would have otherwise, but there’s a reason Jokic racks up so many more assists like that than most NBA centers.

His ability to sense precisely when to pitch or hand the ball off and how to position his body is unparalleled. Truly appreciating how good Jokic is at directing the offense from the elbows is all about minute differences in his timing and positioning. Those things are hard to pick up on, but are what allow the Nuggets to be so successful when they run through him.

A play like this is another example of a little play Jokic makes that possibly no other center would.

When he catches the ball the logical sequence is to swing it to Millsap. Millsap is calling for it, and he has the chance to either get up a shot or drive a closeout with Evan Fournier so far away. However, Jokic looks Millsap off. You can see him notice Murray in the middle of the key, realize no one is tailing him, and calmly delay for a second before pitching it to Murray for an even better look.

The Nuggets offense was better than the Warriors with Jokic on the court last year. The more they run through him the more successful they are. Plays like the two above are what elevate Jokic from a very skilled center to the league’s best offensive center.

It is also worth mentioning one reason Jokic tends to be underrated is the ugliness of his bad moments on the offensive end. He is un-athletic, out of shape, and awkward moving. It looks bad when he gets one of his weird 3/4 hooks blocked. Bad in a way you’ll never see from a more traditionally fluid center like Demarcus Cousins. Because it looks like he’s simply not athletic enough to get his shot off in the NBA.

The thing is, how “bad” a player looks when they mess up doesn’t actually matter. What matters is how often they do bad things in relation to how often they do good things. This is my pet theory for a big part of why someone like Mike Malone would consider Millsap better than Jokic. Millsap looks athletic and like a “normal” good offensive basketball player in a way Jokic does not. Overcoming this aesthetic bias is key to appreciating Jokic.

The more controversial end of the floor with Jokic is the defensive side. Many ardent supporters of his offensive abilities think he’s a liability, or merely average on the defensive end. However, by RPM, he’s 6th among centers in defense this year, was 18th last year, and was 5th his rookie year. What’s more, the Nuggets were 7.3 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court as a rookie, 3.3 points per 100 possessions better last year, and 9.9 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court so far this season. 9.9!

The Nuggets 103.9 (non-garbage time) defensive rating with him on the court would be tied with the Spurs for second best in the NBA! It’s not like the Nuggets are a team full of world-beaters on defense. Gary Harris’s defense is also controversial, but it is hard to make a convincing case he’s more than above-average on that end. None of Murray, Chandler, Barton, Mudiay, Lyles, Plumlee, and Faried are known for their defensive ability. The only Nugget truly known for their defense is Paul Millsap.

So maybe Jokic’s defensive numbers are propped up by playing with Millsap and Harris? Well, across 477 possessions with Jokic on the court but neither Millsap or Harris the Nuggets defensive rating is……..102.9. Even better than Jokic’s defensive rating across all possessions. Hmmmmm.

Some of this is luck. Using Jacob Goldstein’s data (which includes garbage time possibly unfairly punishing him), the Nuggets luck adjusted defensive rating with Jokic on the court is 107.3. 107.3 isn’t exceptional, but would be good for 13th best in the NBA right now. Considering Denver’s paucity of defensive talent and Jokic’s reputation on that end, things still don’t quite add up.

Jokic has legitimate bad spots on the defensive end. He’s slow-footed and can’t jump to save his life. Guys can finish over him, move around him, and at times he gets temperamental and lazy.

His bad spots are glaringly obvious. You watch in pain as he struggles to stay with a pick-and-roll ball handler, gets finished through, or commits a lazy foul.

The good things Jokic does are far less obvious, but far more important. For starters, being good on offense matters a lot on defense. With Jokic on-the-court, the Nuggets are far more likely to score and get to set up their half-court defense.

Nuggets opponents faced a half-court defense on 2.7% more possessions with Jokic on the court in 2015-16, 2.0% more in 2016-17, and 2.1% more this season. Those numbers are all in the 89th percentile or better for forcing opponents to play half-court offense. There is a lot of truth in the old cliche that “sometimes the best defense is a good offense.”

Next comes Jokic’s rebounding. This season he’s rebounding 27.8% of opponent misses when he’s on the court. That is 14th best in the league. More importantly than racking up individual rebounding stats, opponents gather 7.5% fewer offensive rebounds with Jokic on the court. That On/Off differential is good for the 98th percentile, and he was in the 86th and 95th percentile the prior two years. Those numbers suggest Jokic isn’t just good at snatching his own boards, but is actually helping his team to box out and secure rebounds he doesn’t grab.

Much like forcing a team to play against a set defense, limiting teams to one possession is really important. Taken together, those are the two main reasons Jokic has such a positive effect on the Nuggets defense. But that’s not all.

Jokic also steals the ball on 2.0% of opponent possessions, a great number for a big man. Those steals alone account for only one or two plays a game, but are indicative of Jokic’s instincts and awareness on the defensive end.

Beyond forcing teams to play in the half-court and taking away second chances, Denver’s half-court defense is actually better with Jokic on the floor than off it. This year particularly Jokic’s effect is profound.

When Jokic is on the floor, opponents score 5.7 points per 100 half-court possessions fewer. Even with offensive rebounds not included. Last year the differential was 0.6, and the year before it was 2.1 (both in Jokic’s favor). The gap this year is probably mostly due to shooting luck (there aren’t publicly available numbers to check), but could be somewhat due to his improvement on that end of the floor.

What Jokic lacks in perimeter quickness and vertical prowess he makes up for with smart positioning. Opponents shoot 6.3% fewer shots within 4 feet of the basket with Jokic on the court, and he posted a similarly good differential each of the last two years. Unfortunately, that number is for all defensive possessions so it is hard to know how much the transition deterrence and rebounding effects factor in.

My guess is they contribute a fair amount, but since they make up a minority of possessions to begin with some of the effect is actually taking place in the half court. Again, the reason for the difference being Jokic’s awareness. This steal shows how Jokic’s ability to read the game translates from the offensive end to the defensive.

He expertly sees what Nurkic is trying to do and slides into place for the steal. Most of the time, Jokic’s smarts don’t lead to steals. Instead, he rotates to the rim when he needs to and forces opponents into tough midrange shots. At 6’11 he doesn’t need to be the world’s best leaper to deter someone from shooting at the rim.

Considering his rotational awareness, rebounding, steal generation, and ability to prevent transition opportunities Jokic is actually a high-level defender. He may not do it in the way one conventionally expects, but the bottom-line is the Nuggets defensive success depends on Jokic.

Defensive scouting usually focuses on perimeter movement and rim protection. Jokic is a good example of the myriad ways a player can contribute on the defensive end.

There is an interesting counter-argument that Jokic’s defense will be “exposed” in the playoffs. The idea being that teams could relentlessly attack him in pick-and-roll. The thing is none of Jokic’s defensive positives will go away. So even if a team does exploit him more than they would in the regular season, he would need to be truly incapable of guarding opposing pick-and-roll to lose his positive impact. That’s a possibility, but due to his defensive smarts not one I would bet on.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll get to see sometime this April what playoff Jokic actually looks like.

When Jokic is on the court the Nuggets have the point differential of a 60 win team. Last year they played like a 58 win team with him on the floor. Results like that don’t happen by accident. Either his teammates are much better than people give them credit for, or Jokic is heavily underrated. Based on a ton of watching of the Nuggets and dissecting basically all publicly available stats, I really believe Jokic is the cause. If anything, people underrate his supporting cast’s mediocrity.

Jokic is transcendent on offense, and actually a significantly positive defender. He serves as an important reminder that not all great NBA prospects look or play the same. Looking for and being willing to embrace players who succeed in unconventional ways is crucial to good scouting.

Whew. That was a lot. I rarely write about NBA guys, and I don’t plan to make it a trend. The Nuggets are one of the few NBA teams I watch enough to feel informed enough to write about.

In the interest of full disclosure, Jokic is my favorite NBA player. I write this piece partly to impart some scouting lessons I believe we can learn from him, partly to defend him, but mostly because I believe in his talent and think he remains one of the NBA’s most under-appreciated players.

This article was mostly about what Jokic is now, but it bears repeating that he is only 22 freaking years old. Even if he’s not appreciated now, Jokic has plenty of time to convince people. I look forward to the day.