Nikola Jokic: The battle between analytics and the eye test

Nikola Jokic is the curious choice of hill to die on for various factions of NBA cognoscenti. He’s also the best example for why we should just get along already.

Source: Denver Post

August has ended, and not a moment too soon. The NBA offseason spoiled us with an insane lead up to free agency, and delivered every last drop once July rolled around. Kyrie Irving’s trade demand kept us busy after free agency slowed, and thank goodness it did. Those of us who spend our time writing and talking about the NBA may have devoured each other if we didn’t have that to invest our energies into.

One of the most interesting arguments that has arisen in the doldrums of the offseason that have finally set in is the role of statistical evaluation (or analytics) versus the eye test. Proponents of both sides take hard line approaches, and good cases are occasionally made by both, but there’s an easy and obvious solution.

We’re watching a game we love. We want to know more about that game, so we utilize statistics to evaluate. Using the eye test alone is the equivalent of a poker player saying “I never play pocket aces because I always lose when I get them.” Statistical evaluation will tell you that you lose with them less than 20 percent of the time over a large sample, and every large sample. And that’s not just you, it’s everybody.

Using one without the other is like painting a picture with only black and white, or only using colors without boundaries to express texture and contour. You could do it, and it might even still look pretty good. But why would you hamper yourself so?

Perhaps the best example of a player who is divisive among the eye test and analytics crew is Nikola Jokic. He is an analytics darling in every way that phrase can be expressed. Advanced stats like PER, TS%, WS, BPM and VORP love him, as do analysts who swear by such things.

It’s the best expression, because basic counting stats are less impressive. He played fewer than 30 minutes per game last season, making his raw counting stats shine less. He averaged 16.7 points, 9.8 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game in 2016–17, and I’m not even going to waste my time finding out where any of those rank.

His per-36 numbers are better, about 20 percent better across the board due to playing about 28 minutes per game, but again, we’re not going to get that excited at a glance.

This is a situation where the battling eye test and analytics factions have more in common than they could imagine. Watch Nikola Jokic, and you see a player who plays the game more beautifully than perhaps any big man in the NBA today, and among the most aesthetically pleasing games of all time.

His vision and length are a deadly combination on offense, and he’s not a terrible shooter from long range but he’s a lethal mid-range shooter. Jokic was a pedestrian 32.4 percent from three last year, but he was in the 99th percentile when shooting from between 17' and the three-point line last season.

In order to appreciate the magnitude of Jokic’s impact, we could ask the eye test crew, many of whom could certainly rattle off a much better scouting report than I could provide, having watched only a few Denver Nuggets games last season. But that doesn’t QUANTIFY Jokic’s impact, it’s just the colors on the palette.

To finish this work of art, we need numbers. We know he’s good from the post, but is he league average? Elite? Somewhere in between? We know he’s a gifted passer with exceptional vision, but what kind of added impact does his passing provide?

The numbers give the pretty colors the lines and textures that finish the picture. And the numbers are glorious. Jokic is 20th in production among all players who have had more than 100 possessions plus assists. This encompasses all possessions by a player that involve a shot, a turnover, or an assist, and Jokic is responsible for a staggering 1.382 points per possession plus assist.

In comparison, Stephen Curry was responsible for 1.362 points. Isaiah Thomas was responsible for 1.351 points. Kyle Lowry was responsible for 1.381 points.

Only 10 players with over 1000 possessions plus assists had higher production levels than Jokic.

Jokic is also deadly in the post (to answer our earlier question), and he uses that to his advantage. He scored 1.116 points per possession from the post, which is a staggering rate at a relatively low-efficiency play type. When he passes out of the post, it’s a virtual lock of a bucket. The Nuggets score 1.432 points per possession when he passes from the post.

You could watch Nikola Jokic and know he’s an elite talent, a big man with very few comps in the history of the league. But you can’t grasp the depth and breadth of his impact without some cold numbers to quantify just what you’re watching.

Nikola Jokic is treated like the litmus test for eye test versus analytics. That’s an inaccurate portrayal. Instead, Nikola Jokic is the litmus test for cheating yourself by thinking you have to choose one or the other.

Don’t be that guy. Use the black and white and all the colors to paint your picture. If you don’t know how, ask somebody. If you don’t want to, know that your analysis is willfully hampered and that it should be viewed as such.