Ranking the NBA's Top 100 Players, Part 1: The Best Player in the World
Nikola Jokic led the Nuggets to their first championship in franchise history. In the process, he became the best basketball player in the world.
*This series is one I published in September on Medium. I’m republishing it here to coincide with the launch of my Substack. (Skip to the afterparty.)
Last year I decided to rank the best 100 players in the NBA. This year I’m doing it again. It’s a lot of work and thought, and seeing “77 min read” on Medium was a bit jarring, and a bit of a downer considering it took me many times that number of minutes to write and I knew basically no one would read it. But I had too much fun and couldn’t stop thinking about it, in spite of some painful whiffs last year (balanced by many more not-whiffs, but a writer’s mind will never dwell on success), so I decided to re-up. I love basketball, seeing basketball, plying my understanding of the game, and watching it hold up — or, in Cole Anthony’s case, not.
This year, I decided to write the list in ascending order, 1 to 100, as opposed to the typical descending order, from 100 to 1. I hate the feeling I get looking at, say, the NFL’s annual top 100 player unveiling, especially in the middle parts, where maybe they’ve unveiled players 100–41, and wondering if a guy I love is actually top 40 or not on the list at all. I want my hypothetical reader to encounter a claim and its justification and go from there, rather than scroll down to the bottom of the list, probe it for validity, and then maybe decide to explore tidbits of my rationale. Besides, the suspense rarely ever feels worth it.
The reason I do this is to celebrate the players I think deserve to be celebrated, and to criticize the ones I think are overhyped, to be forthright. It also gives me a compass of how I feel about what makes players good, what makes for good basketball, and how good I am at seeing that. I’m open to being wrong. I’d rather be wrong about my list than use flawed principles to be right. I am far from the smartest basketball writer.
I construct the list by tiering players, breaking them into sub-tiers, and then ordering within those sub-tiers. The top tier is “Tier 0” because it’s not a tier if you’re the only one on it. It’s just you. You’ve transcended tierdom. Tier 1 is the small group of players whose teams are expected to compete for a title simply by virtue of their presence on said team. Tier 2 is the larger inner circle of superstars who are franchise-defining players. Tier 3 is a larger tier of players who are star players, either ascending toward Tier 2, descending toward Tier 4, or peaking short of superstar status. Tier 4 are the best players that would not be considered stars, who are preferably your third, maybe even fourth best player. Tier 5 is the iceberg tier, consisting of a massive list of positively contributing players, who can be key pieces on good teams. Most of those players aren’t on this list, and are players I considered for the list and eventually eliminated. Overall, my logic in ranking players is this: If everyone above you on the list were eliminated from the NBA, who would be the best player in the league? The process is really uninteresting, but I feel obligated to explain it somewhat, for reference. The list, though, feels noteworthy.
Tier 0 — The Best Player in the World
Nikola Jokic, C, Denver Nuggets
Let’s head back to Thursday, June 15th…
“You know that I, I told that, uh, I don’t want to stay on parade, but I fucking want to stay on parade this is the best (inaudible — “day of my”?) … fucking life. Yeah this is, this is amazing. This is, uh, we all gonna remember this day our whole lives, and when we see you guys that came out on the streets and, actually this one is for you. We love you Denver, this one is for you.”
It must be the case that winning the NBA title was Jokic’s preferred outcome of last season. There can be no doubt to that. But it wasn’t until the parade that he seemed happy about it. Not only that, but compelled to share that happiness, and allow the greater mass of basketball followers share in that happiness with him. The eruption of cheers at the “I fucking want to stay on parade” wasn’t just about a speaker gassing up a huge crowd and that huge crowd feeling happy to get gassed up. It was a breakthrough in a relationship between a player and a community he’s been representing for 8 years. Denver fans just wanted to make the big guy feel something similar to what he made them feel.
Jokic’s postgame press conference after the clinching Game 5 victory over Miami was deadpanned and even reluctant, as he famously grimaced at the notion of the parade being three whole days away — “No, I have to go home” said the Serbian abroad. It was funny to outsiders, watching Jokic and seeing a man truly scheduled for a shift at work where others would see a dream coming true. It was also a bit disconnecting for the people who enjoy watching him. Thousands of Denverites were pouring through the streets literally as he said this, climbing stoplights and shouting exuberantly at and with strangers. And here he was, at his own personal moment of triumph, talking about “Nobody likes his job, or maybe they do; they’re lying.” What usually comes off as perspective — not making it about himself, not getting caught up in the moment — came off as genuine indifference. We are used to seeing tears from our champions, and we crave that. We want to see the counterweight to their inhuman athletic gifts: a rush of human joy reserved for wedding days and the births of children. Instead we got what felt like more athlete-speak.
Nikola, why aren’t you happy?
The job’s not done; we have the parade on Thursday.
So, to see him finally grasp the joy of the moment in practice and not just in concept, was relieving. It was just nice to know that he was happy. Happy to win. Happy to stay on parade. Happy to be with the people he has made happy. For Jokic, the point of the game has never been glory. Winning has been the objective, but the glory of winning was not the point of winning. In a feature for Sports Illustrated in March of 2022, Jokic compared being the best player in his sport to eating ice cream in a quote that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since:
“I will say I love ice cream the most in the world. But after 10 days of ice cream you get bored of it. There are other things I love as much or more than basketball.”
For a foreigner who champions a collectivist culture, who prioritizes the strength of the group over the strength of himself, he may not have realized how America feels about its heroes. He saved a great city from a 47-year basketball malaise that felt at times like it would never end. As much as he wants to defer credit and downplay the significance of his job, it was meaningful to see him accept and embrace the significance of what he had done. In America, community derives strength from the heroism of individuals. Once he saw that impact, I think, he realized that basketball is a different, better thing than ice cream.
So, how did he get here, in Tier 0, as the greatest player in the world?
Well, Jokic would likely say it was the strength of his teammates, and he wouldn’t be wrong. Nikola Jokic hoisted two MVP trophies from the time Jamal Murray tore his ACL in 2021 to the time he returned. Without his co-star, Jokic could labor endlessly to make the Nuggets competitive, but his team simply lacked the firepower around him to show what he could truly do. Add in Michael Porter Jr. missing 73 games of a season and various stints before and since, and Jokic was on an island, the only player who was as good as Denver needed him to be. Other than Gordon and reserve Jeff Green, nothing Jokic used to orchestrate a title had been there the past two years when it mattered.
At the heart of the Nuggets’ strategy is the interplay of Jokic and Murray. On a given possession, Murray and Jokic alone have the potential to create so many different types of shots for each other off the pick-and-roll. Jokic sets a pick for Murray at the top of the arc, and anything can happen from there. Jokic can roll to the rim and attack with an arsenal of floaters or post moves. Jokic can pop out to the 3-point line and make open deep shots. Murray can drive, can pull-up midrange, or take a 3 off the Jokic pick if it’s open. This feature from The Ringer explores the pair’s dynamic in depth. Add in surrounding players who are avid basket cutters and knockdown shooters, and the options multiply, dizzying defenses.
Jokic and Murray played the second-most minutes together of any two players in the playoffs, behind Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo (who played two more games together than Jokic-Murray with fewer paired minutes per game). For those minutes, the Nuggets had an offensive rating of 121.1, which is higher than the Sacramento Kings’ first place offensive rating of 118.6 from the regular season. (Offensive rating measures points per 100 possessions, more effectively measuring offense than points per game because it evaluates teams who play fast and teams who play slow on an even playing field).
Other notable playoff duos and their offensive ratings:
Butler-Adebayo 111.3
Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown 112.7
LeBron James-Anthony Davis 113.1
Stephen Curry-Klay Thompson 114.4
Kevin Durant-Devin Booker 119.2
Aside from other Nuggets pairings, only Booker and Chris Paul — in 438 fewer minutes — had a better offensive rating together on the court, at 121.5. The top pairing is actually Jokic and Gordon at 121.7. Jokic developed a tight chemistry with Gordon last year with Murray and Porter Jr. sidelined. Gordon feasts on Jokic’s interior passing with cuts to the basket when Jokic has the ball in deep. He has proven to be the perfect frontcourt complement for Jokic, allowing him room to operate and taking advantage of his extraordinary vision when cutting lanes open up.
At first glance, Jokic appears unorthodox with a basketball. His transition dribble is tall and lumbering, his shots at the rim seem gracelessly hoisted from somewhere between his shoulder and elbow, and his fadeaway jumper looks exaggerated, like a goofy foreign language teacher doing a Michael Jordan impression to teach his fifth grade class the word for “goat.” Eventually, though, you see that he isn’t unorthodox, he’s merely unbound from orthodoxy. He can do the traditional 7-footer things like post up, run the floor and seal a defender, and finish through contact. He just also has this whole array of shooting and passing angles and motions that no one else realizes are there, and it’s weird to see him readily employ them as standard operating procedure.
The number one trait in basketball is control. Jokic has exterior control — awareness of where everyone on the floor is at all times — and interior control — he knows just how to move his body to make the orange ball go where he wants it. It’s why he does things like catch a ball with one hand, and with a mere roll of his wrist, redirects it to a cutting player lost by the defense under the basket. He steps back and flings a prayer of a shot from 30 feet away as the third quarter clock expires, and it’s exactly on target. Those plays aren’t the product of drills in the offseason. He doesn’t practice catching and throwing a ball with one hand in a fluid motion. He doesn’t practice stepback 30 footers from the wing. He has great awareness of the chessboard and connection to the root of the basket. The only player who speaks the same language as Jokic in terms of inherent control and awareness is Luka Doncic, and Doncic has nobody to pass to.
What must it be like, being Nikola Jokic? Does his ungodly awareness translate to everyday life? With his vision, do you think he always knows which lane on I-70 will be fastest? Do you think he’s ever wadded up a burger wrapper and missed the trash can? Does he take his clothes off before bed and find his wife cutting from the bedroom to the bathroom right as she passes the laundry hamper? Some NBA players are there because they worked hard to master a craft. Others, like Jokic, are there because they harnessed a gift.
Not that Jokic’s path has been without work. He has the physique of a sofa and has a slack-jawed look of exhaustion the moment he hits the floor for warmups (just as all of us job-hating normies feel exhausted at work), but he runs and runs and runs and runs and doesn’t wear down or lose touch or focus. His conditioning was a huge misconception that’s mostly been corrected, but he had to work to get there.
Moreover, his defense has been an area of concern since he rose to prominence. It was the major question mark of this Nuggets team: How can they defend at a playoff, let alone a championship level, with Jokic as their last line of defense? In watching Jokic over the years, and particularly as defensive liability was used as a major critique of his MVP campaigns, I always thought there was a framework of effective defense there. Jokic has learned what position, approximately, to be in at all times. In recent seasons, he’s looked like a player doing a walkthrough rehearsal of proper defensive technique and positioning to acclimate to the motions. Contesting shots you know you can’t block is an essential defensive skill. Jokic has drawn ire for waving sheepishly at opponents raising to fire. This postseason, you saw those wimpy fanning motions intensify and Jokic legitimately contested shots, making Karl-Anthony Towns, Rudy Gobert, DeAndre Ayton, Anthony Davis, and Bam Adebayo work for every point they got in close. He also perfected the art of the intentional kicked ball violation to throw offenses out of their flow. He wasn’t suddenly Hakeem Olajuwon, but he was good enough to win it all, good enough to shut up his detractors. With his offensive game being what it is, it’s good enough to make him the best all-around asset to employ on a basketball team.
An underappreciated area where Jokic has endured a near total transformation is his temperament. Jokic was notorious in Denver for giving frustration fouls, the most famous of which was a holy smackdown on an unsuspecting Cam Payne that got him ejected from Game 4 of the Nuggets series with the Suns in 2021. A year later, he was ejected from Game 2 of the Nuggets’ first round series against Golden State when he stormed over to an official after a missed call and was assessed a second technical foul. His lone technical foul this postseason came when Suns owner Mat Ishbia wouldn’t give him the ball on an out-of-bounds play. It was frustration, but it was also odd as heck, to the point of being anomalous. He had 5 technical fouls this season compared to 23 combined in the previous two seasons, according to teamrankings.com. Even in the Finals in Game 2, when three out-of-bounds calls went Miami’s way that Jokic disagreed with vehemently, he kept his frustration in check and kept his focus on his play. None of the drama resurfaced that saw Jokic shove then-Heat player Markieff Morris in the back at midcourt, prompting a squad of Heat players to rabble rouse outside the Denver locker room last season. It was adulation and respect between Jokic, the opposing team, and the officials. Perhaps he worked on that aspect of his game like any other, perhaps fatherhood has softened him or given him perspective. His adorable daughter, who was front and center for much of the championship celebration, was born in September 2021.
In all, there was just too much Jokic to deny him this status. You watch him, the awkward bumblebee, and you think, “Is this really the best player in the world?” But you see him score, see him pass, see him keep coming again and again, and yes, you even see him defend, you see him box out, rebound, initiate a fast break the other way. Despite his power and prowess, Giannis pales. Despite his math-shattering shooting ability, Steph pales. Despite his more traditionally packaged game and most recent successful MVP campaign, Embiid pales. At the end, there is Jokic, steady, graceless and impeccable. He is an offensive ecosystem unto himself. If you were building a championship team in today’s NBA, nobody else gets you closer than Jokic. He has too much.
When the Nuggets won the championship, talk turned quickly (in certain circles, anyway) to whether the Nuggets have laid the groundwork for what could become a dynasty. Jokic has continued to improve his game, and it is a total mystery how his game will age. His game is predicated on strength, which outlasts athleticism, and touch, which outlasts speed. He could be very effective for another 10 years, although he’s also liable to happily retire well before that. Murray and Porter Jr. are viable pieces to make a run at a championship every year they are healthy, which so far has been two of the four years they’ve been together. Gordon and Caldwell-Pope are locked in for the short-term future. Christian Braun is developing. Their team-building strategy is putting together a bevy of young players behind their core. Dynasty gets thrown around every time a new team wins a ring. But Denver is building with the intent to last.
When he looked out on the tens of thousands gathered at Civic Center Park to dedicate his championship to them, a bond forged between Nikola Jokic and the city of Denver that I don’t believe was there previously. I don’t believe Jokic understood the sheer magnitude of the joy he’s brought this community over the years and specifically with this run. If the Nuggets are to become a perennial championship contender (we’ll skirt around the D word for now) a la the Spurs of the first 20 years of the millennium, Jokic will be the key, and he needs something to fight for other than work. If there is a next time for these Nuggets winning a championship, I suspect Jokic’s demeanor will be different in the postgame press conference. Next time he’ll know exactly what he’s celebrating.