Jokic is the 4th best player of all time

I agree honestly in terms of peaks or prime stretch. He is up there. I think the only that holds him back from being the contention of the GOAT is his defense. I think he is the best offensive floor raiser I ever seen.

I don't think he has the best offensive ceiling per say, but he is damn good. Best offensive player I seen.

So we're putting Giannis top 10 all-time as well then? He's barely behind Jokic in most of these seasons and has averaged 30/12/6 63%TS since 2018. Jokic clearly has ATG impact but it's hard to say he's better than most of the other greats just because stats in today's NBA when we got 3 other guys (Giannis, SGA and Luka when healthy) who are producing near that level as well.

[QUOTE=ImKobe;14986144]So we're putting Giannis top 10 all-time as well then? He's barely behind Jokic in most of these seasons and has averaged 30/12/6 63%TS since 2018. Jokic clearly has ATG impact but it's hard to say he's better than most of the other greats just because stats in today's NBA when we got 3 other guys (Giannis, SGA and Luka when healthy) who are producing near that level as well.[/QUOTE]
Is ad better than joker tho?

[QUOTE=Axe;14986145]Is ad better than joker tho?[/QUOTE]

No but it has nothing to do with this thread.

[QUOTE=ImKobe;14986144]So we're putting Giannis top 10 all-time as well then? He's barely behind Jokic in most of these seasons and has averaged 30/12/6 63%TS since 2018. Jokic clearly has ATG impact but it's hard to say he's better than most of the other greats just because stats in today's NBA when we got 3 other guys (Giannis, SGA and Luka when healthy) who are producing near that level as well.[/QUOTE]

Giannis is insanely dominant, sort of a modern day Shaq (not exactly Shaq obviously, but Giannis fills the most physically dominant big man role). But he isn't quite up to Jokic.

Regular Season Jokic 21-25: [B]31.8 PER, 66.3 TS%, .304 WS/48, 13.1 BPM[/B]

Regular Season Giannis 21-25: 30 PER, 62.8 TS%, .241 WS/48, 9.3 BPM

Playoff Jokic 21-25 (47 games): [B]30.7 PER, 62.2 TS%, .259 WS/48, 11.9 BPM[/B]

Playoff Giannis 20-23 (45 games): 27.5 PER, 58.2 TS%, .200 WS/48, 9.8 BPM

Jokic is better across the board. Giannis IS an all time great though, not exactly sure where I would rank him. Top 20 all time easily. My only small issue with Giannis is he hasn't quite shined in the playoffs outside of 2021 (which also had a lot of injury luck). His 2021 finals WAS one of the best performances of all time. Giannis also has barely played in the playoffs recently (only 3 games in 2023, none in 2024) due to injury, so he's taken a backseat to Jokic.

[QUOTE=ImKobe;14986144][B]So we're putting Giannis top 10 all-time as well then?[/B] He's barely behind Jokic in most of these seasons and has averaged 30/12/6 63%TS since 2018. Jokic clearly has ATG impact but it's hard to say he's better than most of the other greats just because stats in today's NBA when we got 3 other guys (Giannis, SGA and Luka when healthy) who are producing near that level as well.[/QUOTE]

Jokic isn't top 10 all-time as far as rankings go yet, so no. Both have been playing long enough and achieved enough to be top 20 though.

I feel like its become convoluted enough now that it's better to do tiers. There's like 15 guys who could be legit 'top 10' players, and also 15 guys who could be 'top 10-20'. You're gonna end up with some people ranking someone like Steph outside the top 10, or Dirk outside the top 20 when they each have cases to be in those respective classes. It's getting harder to remove people. How long before someone like Duncan is pushed out in favor of Jokic? Are Magic and Bird locked into the top 10 for all eternity? Does Oscar's legacy as being this top 12ish level player fade more because Jokic is now doing a triple double and will probably do it multiple times over the next 5 years( and of course, Westbrook did it several time prior but he's not viewed as a GOAT level player)? Will Kobe end up dropping from bubble top 10 to like 15th in the next decade? What about Hakeem? In 40 years it will be 100 years since Bill Russell won 11 rings Will it just be seen as a relic of a bygone era ( I think that's already happening) that would be impossible to replicate so people just stop c assigning it much value?

[QUOTE=Phoenix;14986152]Jokic isn't top 10 all-time as far as rankings go yet, so no. Both have been playing long enough and achieved enough to be top 20 though.

I feel like its become convoluted enough now that it's better to do tiers. There's like 15 guys who could be legit 'top 10' players, and also 15 guys who could be 'top 10-20'. You're gonna end up with some people ranking someone like Steph outside the top 10, or Dirk outside the top 20 when they each have cases to be in those respective classes. It's getting harder to remove people. How long before someone like Duncan is pushed out in favor of Jokic? Are Magic and Bird locked into the top 10 for all eternity? Does Oscar's legacy as being this top 12ish level player fade more because Jokic is now doing a triple double and will probably do it multiple times over the next 5 years( and of course, Westbrook did it several time prior but he's not viewed as a GOAT level player)? Will Kobe end up dropping from bubble top 10 to like 15th in the next decade? What about Hakeem? In 40 years it will be 100 years since Bill Russell won 11 rings Will it just be seen as a relic of a bygone era ( I think that's already happening) that would be impossible to replicate so people just stop c assigning it much value?[/QUOTE]

The best way to rank in my opinion is pre-3 point line and post-3 point line. Although you could argue 2021 is a start of it's own era too.

So we basically got 1949-1979 as an "era", 1980-2020 as an "era", and now 2021-onwards as a third era.

Would make ranking players much easier except for maybe an odd case like Kareem who played in both of the first two eras.

[QUOTE=StrongLurk;14986154]The best way to rank in my opinion is pre-3 point line and post-3 point line. Although you could argue 2021 is a start of it's own era too.

So we basically got 1949-1979 as an "era", 1980-2020 as an "era", and now 2021-onwards as a third era.

Would make ranking players much easier except for maybe an odd case like Kareem who played in both of the first two eras.[/QUOTE]

I tend to think there's been 4 different versions of the NBA, and while there are of course greats that transcend eras, so many things in terms of accomplishments and stats are circumstantial that it's really tough to compare the more time goes on. Its much better to rank the relative dominance of someone against their peers than someone playing 50 years ago.

As far as Jokic goes, it's much easier in terms of both physical, skill and mental attributes to say he's a modern day Bird more than any of the other players in recent memory who wore that moniker( like Dirk and Luka even though neither played anything like him). But it does give us a good proxy to drop Bird in this era or Jokic in the 80's and extrapolate how good they'd be. My main thing is, will Jokic even be allowed to play like that in the 80s or forced to play like the centers back then. He may have been prime Sabonis before he got to the NBA.

[QUOTE=StrongLurk;14986154]The best way to rank in my opinion is pre-3 point line and post-3 point line. Although you could argue 2021 is a start of it's own era too.

So we basically got 1949-1979 as an "era", 1980-2020 as an "era", and now 2021-onwards as a third era.

Would make ranking players much easier except for maybe an odd case like Kareem who played in both of the first two eras.[/QUOTE]
We're really lumping in the pre shot clock era with the 60's & 70's, or the late 90's/early 00's with the late 2010's. That's no good either :lol The league was radically different during those timeframes.

The best you can do is determine who was the best during their era, the league simply changes too frequently to try to make any reasonable comparison between players decades apart.

[I]"My main thing is, will Jokic even be allowed to play like that in the 80s or forced to play like the centers back then. He may have been prime Sabonis before he got to the NBA. "[/I]

Thinking more on that statement I made above, it's not even a question of whether Jokic would be allowed to play in the 80s or 90s like he does now, because he wouldn't have developed the same skillset or at least to the same degree, especially his shooting range attempts. If you were taking 4.5 threes in the 90s like what Jokic is doing now, you were either Reggie, Mark Price or Glen Rice. He'd be great at passing because guys like Vlade and Sabonis were great big man passers, but not to the degree where they're in essence the teams point-center like Jokic is dropping 10 dimes a night. We should be arguing where he ranks as a point guard as much as where he does a center, because the lines are blurred with him.

Ultimately, these all-time greats( Jokic included) will be great in any era and develop whatever they need to. David Robinson would probably be something like Giannis today if he came out in 2015, because by then we had moved beyond the logic that 7 footers needed to park their asses in the post and stay there( and the Admiral even in the 90s was more a face-up scorer at the elbow than he was mixing it up in the post).

Am I the only one that doesn't think the threes are that important to Jokic's individual greatness? It's a nice weapon to have but if he stayed in the paint he would still be a major scoring threat, great passer and great rebounder.

[QUOTE=SouBeachTalents;14986171]We're really lumping in the pre shot clock era with the 60's & 70's, or the late 90's/early 00's with the late 2010's. That's no good either :lol The league was radically different during those timeframes.

The best you can do is determine who was the best during their era, the league simply changes too frequently to try to make any reasonable comparison between players decades apart.[/QUOTE]

Okay well Jokic is about to be the best player for a 5th year in a row. Who else has done that besides MJ, Lebron, and maybe Kareem? I guess Mikan maybe?

[QUOTE=Real Men Wear Green;14986192][B]Am I the only one that doesn't think the threes are that important to Jokic's individual greatness[/B]? It's a nice weapon to have but if he stayed in the paint he would still be a major scoring threat, great passer and great rebounder.[/QUOTE]

He 'only' takes 4.5 a game so no, it's not. It's just another weapon in his arsenal to keep the defense honest, but he's clearly BITW/GOAT level without it. It's more like '[I]Jesus, this dude was already an MVP and now he's shooting 45% on 3's too[/I]?'

He’s not tho.

Somewhere in the top 20 currently.

Will be top 12-15 when done.

[QUOTE=StrongLurk;14984734]You can't make an argument for anyone besides Kareem/MJ/Lebron to be ahead of peak Jokic. This isn't a short peak either, we are on 5 years of absurd dominance. Jokic simply has had WAY less help than Kareem/MJ/Lebron, which isn't debatable.[/QUOTE]

I'd take Wilt Chamberlain over Joker, but yeah, he's easily among the best ever already.