This is not meant to be an anti nuggets post. More about how ridiculous Jokic is. If Jokic was out for the year due to injury how many wins would the Nuggets get? I feel like Jokic is worth like an additional 20 wins.
Let’s take the other 3 teams of Vegas top 4 title contenders
Boston: Take out Tatum and they are for sure making the playoffs
Milwaukee: Now that they have Dame I think they would for sure make the playoffs if Giannis was out for the year.
Phoenix: Whether it’s KD or Booker, if only one of them is out they should definitely still make the playoffs.
Good thing for Denver is Jokic is built like a horse
The Nuggets had the highest +/- in the NBA with Jokic on the court last year.
The Nuggets were dead last in the NBA in +/- without Jokic on the court last year.
Do what you will with that information.
The Nuggets are probably better than what the stat suggested without Jokic because their team is structured around Jokic. It would be different without him but still not much better. Probably a play in team at best.
Yes I think that sums it up nicely haha
Thats probably true for a decent number of guys though.
You’re comparing starter only minutes or bench only minutes to combined starter/bench minutes
How can “the highest in NBA” be true for a decent number of guys in NBA.
By highest in the NBA, most people mean “better than the best offense in the NBA”
Otherwise he 100% is not the best in the NBA. Like boban played 31 games and had a better net rating.
Moreover the nuggets play a lot more starter concentrated minutes than other teams. That leads to their starters having a better net rating, and their bench players have a worse net rating.
The warriors used to do the same thing. Every curry minute was really curry + Draymond on, and the offense stats were curry + Draymond off. Unsurprisingly, that will exaggerate your raw on off numbers
There’s only one player in the NBA who is first and it’s Jokic.
And if you are into advanced stats, in addition to leading the league in BPM, Jokic also leads the NBA in WS (win shares) which measures a players direct contribution to wins.
The Nuggets also have a larger differential in net rating when Jokic is on vs. off the court than any other team’s differential with/without any other player in the league.
There’s actually not a lot of stats, advanced or not, that can point to any other player in the NBA being more valuable to their team than Jokic is to the Nuggets.
So the question becomes, how shitty are the Nuggets without Jokic? Well, they certainly had a dogshit record without him, and were (anecdotally) comically bad whenever he was on the bench, but it also turns out they have the worst net rating of any team in the NBA when those teams have any one of their starters off the court.
But if you’d like to submit a team that falls off more without any one particular player on the court, I’m all ears.