Jokic

Nikola Jokić probably just had the best half-decade of numbers in NBA history. Since the start of 2020-21, regular and postseason combined, he ranks 2nd in total points, 1st in total rebounds, 2nd in total assists, 1st in total steals and 1st in total raw plus-minus. Over the same stretch, he's averaged 27.1 points, 12.4 rebounds, 8.9 assists and 1.4 steals in 35.2 minutes, with a 65.6 TS% that's 8.2 points over the league average. In 2024-25 alone, he averaged a triple-double while leading the NBA in "points added by overall shooting." He led the league in that category in three of the last five seasons (with Giannis Antetokounmpo leading in 2023-24 and Stephen Curry leading in 2020-21). His marks for box plus/minus in those five seasons rank 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th all time. His combined box plus/minus over those five years and 425 games is 12.8. That's 3.3 clear of second-place Giannis' 9.5, and the distance between those two marks is about the same as the distance between 2nd and 9th. His 13.1 box plus/minus in just the regular season gives him the highest ever for any 364-game span (that's how many he's played in the last five years). The best non-Jokić span of that length is Michael Jordan's 12.2 from 1987 to 1991. This run has also pushed him all the way up to first place on the all-time leaderboards in box plus/minus, win shares per 48 minutes and player efficiency rating. Jordan and LeBron James make up the rest of the top three in two of those leaderboards, while Jordan and David Robinson round out the top three in the other. And all these numbers aren't of the empty-calorie variety. During these five years, in the regular and postseason combined, the Denver Nuggets are +8.6 points per 100 possessions with Jokić on the floor and -7.2 when he's off. We've seen players like LeBron, Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook average triple-doubles or near triple-doubles. We've seen players like Curry and Kevin Durant combine scoring volume and scoring efficiency in seemingly impossible fashion. We've never seen a single player check all those boxes in quite the same way Jokić has (especially not over five years). You've probably seen some of my "blind polls." You've probably been mad about one or two. At this point, I've gotten pretty good at predicting the results. And I can pretty much guarantee that these five years from Jokić would beat any five-year stretch from anyone. Wilt Chamberlain (when you adjust for pace), Jordan, LeBron, Curry, you name it. You can certainly argue that other players across NBA history have been better basketball players than Jokić, but it'd be hard to craft a convincing argument that anyone else has had better individual numbers during any half-decade run.