Don’t think he really has a lane to run in 2024. He’s not pulling much of Trump’s core support, and while he might pull disaffected Republicans, primary polling suggests that’s around 36% of Republican voters (assuming everyone but Trump and Ramaswamy voters are disaffected). Recent Polling from Gallup suggests that around 46.8% of the country consider themselves Republicans or Republican-leaning Independents, while about 45.5% of the country consider themselves Democrats or Democratic-leaning Independents.
So the disaffected Republicans give Cuban 16.8% of the voters, true Independents (those that expressed a lean towards neither the Democrats nor Republicans) give him another 6.75%. That gives him 23.55% of the voters, while Trump is sitting on 29.95% of the voters. That means to win the popular vote, he’d need to siphon off another 11% of voters from Biden. As Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents are 45.5% of voters, that means he’d have to take 24% of the support from an incumbent president. Do you see a quarter of Biden voters abandoning him in a 3 way race that Trump is threatening to win? And given the polarization within many states, I don’t think Cuban could win any but the most purple states.
If you look at a party lean index, and give Cuban every state that’s within 5 points (excluding Florida because it’s Trump’s home state, but including Texas because it’s Cuban’s home state), he comes up with 179 electoral votes. Not sure I see a path for the remaining 91 electoral votes. If the election goes to the House, I do not see any path for Cuban to win the presidency.
Kareem, Wilt, Russell, Shaq, Hakeem are all easily above Jokic imo. I’d say Jokic is somewhere from 6-8 with Moses Malone and David Robinson. Probably 7th behind Moses imo, but i wouldn’t argue if you put him one spot higher or lower.