Nikola Jokic has broken the record for most assists by a center in NBA history with 5,661. He did so in 770 games.
Jokic breaks Kareem’s record of 5,660 assists in 1,650 games. He currently has 7 assists against the Magic.
Good luck to the person trying to catch this record
Yang Hansen will š¤
I put $10 on him for ROTY and I’m not losing hope but I wouldn’t say it’s going well
Youād have gotten more mileage out of buying a side for his hotpot streams and getting a photo
I put an amount I couldn’t afford to lose on Chet winning ROTY and Embiid winning MVP back in 2023. You’re good.
blud thought injuries were off
I hope you did, You will learn one day.
Didnāt Embiid actually win MVP that year tho?
Nope, it was the year he was leading the race before Kuminga landed on his knee.
I hope you lose, just cause sports betting is a succubus.
Manifest it!!!
Young handsome boutta do it in 5 trust š
By the end of his career, Jokic might be amongst the all-time PGs in the assist leaderboard. I don’t think any center will get close to Jokic.
He passed Kareem for 50th all time in career assists. He should be pushing 15th place or so in 3 seasons. There is a reasonable chance he finishes 10th all time in career assists but on the mt rushmore of best passers of all time for any position.
10th is probably going to be Harden or Oscar (depending on if Harden plays long enough to pass Oscar by). Jokic needs to put up another 4000 or so assists, give or take. It’s doable but totally depends on how long Jokic decides to play.
Who is the Mt Rushmore? It’s kind of hard to say.
Like is Magic/Stockton/Nash/Jokic contraversial?
How about Magic/LeBron/Stockton/Paul? I feel like only Magic and Stockton are locks.
Certainly not as easy to pick as scoring, which is almost obviously Jordan/Wilt/LeBron/Kareem.
He’s over 60% of the way to cracking the all-time top 10 in assists.
It puts into perspective how insane the leaderboards are that Jokic has been the best passer in the league for so long and he’s not even halfway to being in the top 4.
I also think Jokic (as well as every player nowadays) has an easier time racking them up, because of juiced up offense, higher pace and the fact that if you pass laterally to someone and they take three dribbles into a contested fadeaway that somehow counts as an assist.
Just to be clear, obviously I think Joker is a god-tier passer. I’m only saying that players’ numbers, and especially points and assists, need to be put in the context of the era
They do, but the whole ‘takes 3 dribbles’ thing can’t really be used against him. That is not era dependent; Stockton was a GOD passer but his assist count infamously is inflated by this kind of ‘assist,’ same for literally every player at the top.
I thought that in the past they would be a lot more strict about it though?
Thatās what Iām saying!!!!!
Stockton
Jokic
Derik Queen may have an outside chance.
I wish I had Derik Queen on my team. Having that promising and fun of rookie has to be amazing, Iām glad the Pelicans have something to enjoy š
My brother in christ you have Anthony Edwards
Look at that record thoā¦
Your team has potential man, the record is not indicative I swear. Like there’s some real good pieces there, it feels like the pistons from a couple years back.
That potential will never amount to anything unless they clean house with the front office and get a new owner
I canāt remember the last time we lost.
We will see how durable he ends up being, Jokic has been amazingly durable for his size, and can play huge minutes. Hopefully DQ can beat the Nola curse
Ooooo thatās a good one
Idk, I think it might be Curry-esque. Heās obviously the GOAT in this category, but by changing the game through being so good in this area here will be young guys who get the freedom to drop dimes out the gate
Jokic is still ājustā a career 7apg because of his early seasons. He wasnāt stacking high apg until he was 23⁄24 bc the he wasnāt enabled to
Oooooooo, thatās a really good point
Derik Queen is ready
Iāll have to watch that closely then
Rockets just found that out
Ooooooo true
Sengun can probably do it, his conditioning is a lot better than Jokic.
Then again Jokic already looks like he eats junk food and works crops all day and he is still the best player in the world, so maybe he plays until he is 50 averaging a triple double.
Zero chance. Jokic had more assists in the last two years than Sengun has had in his four+ years. And the gap keeps widening every week
jokic literally has the record for most minutes played in a playoff game (at least since 1984)
Not just that. He played 65 minutes and ran more steps&miles than any other player on either team, including Lillard and McCollum who both went over 55 minutes.Ā
Iām also curious how Seguns career will go
Lebron and Magic played Center
If Jokic got listed as pg for a couple games, then hes a pg too now?
Which he has done.Ā
Ahh yes, known centers LeBron James and Magic Johnson
This is for players who play their most minutes as center
Took less than half the games it took Kareem, fucking insane
To be fair, kareems game was also very different.
Also, other than the Wilt exception (as is always the case), a center trying to be the playmaker would have been immediately nixed by any coach in the league.
Bill Walton. But yes its modern form is exclusively modern.
Bill Walton did it quite a bit before his bones and ligaments turned to dust.
Not quite true. There were a number of centers who were used as playmakers, just in a bit different of a way. People have mentioned Bill Walton but Sam Lacey, Alvin Adams, and Vlade Divac are names worth mentioning here as well.
Lacey was particularly fun to watch when KC used him as that pylon, high post, connective and initiative passer.
also Arvydas Sabonis deserves a shout out
The crippled corpse of arvydas sabonis at that
Brad Miller was also a pretty good passer in the day, if not quite to the level of these other guys
Wes Unseld throws an outlet pass assist into the chat
And seeing Sam Lacey in this chat is well worth it. Sam was a great passing big for his time.
The same could be said prior to Jokic re-inventing the role.
Traditional roles were already largely dead by the time Jokic came into the league. Draymond won a title playing point center before Jokic was drafted. Obviously Jokic is much better at it, but that probably doesn’t need to be said.
What a shame for all the other playmaking centers.
also assists today count after the player receiving the pass has taken two dribbles, faked out a defender, and slayed a kraken before scoring
assists used to be much more tightly scored and not as prevalent
While I agree they are definitely looser than before, they’ve always been at the discretion of the scorekeeper which has allowed a lot of home cooking, with some players getting significantly more lenient treatment at home. This is true for basically every stat but points.
The man is a prototype
Not even close.
Shows you thereās always mfers hating on greatness
I hate on lazy defense which he is decidedly not great at so I donāt know how you can claim I am hating greatness when my biggest criticism towards him is his horrible defense.
Brother no one mentioned defense in this comment chain and you’ve posted in this thread like 30 times
Iād be surprised if Wilt didnāt have the next highest average per game after Jokic. He had 4.4 APG and 4643 in 1045 games.
I was actually impressed by that on Kareem’s behalf insofar as it means his career assists per game is about half that of Jokic’s, which unironically is a really good mark for a center.
Turns out Kareem averaged 3.6 assists per game for his career, with many seasons around 4-5. Jokic “only” averages 7.4 assists per game in his career thus far, though since 2023 he’s averaged an insane 9.8, currently at 10.9 for this season.
Goes to show how insane Jokic’s current run is that I can consider other centers putting up half his assist numbers to be quite impressive.
Different expectations of centers during Kareemās time. The point guard passed the ball and the Center posted up.
Wasn’t that the same expectation before Jokic? So is Jokic then so great that he changed how the league views the role of a center?
The role of the center was changing slowly well before him. See: Dirk. KD probably changed it the most given that he played like a guard from day one when he was drafted in 2007. Big men shooters like Hedo, Kevin Love and Chris Bosh also expanded on the perception of how bigs should be used. Jokic just came along at the perfect time to really push the envelope of what was expected of big men as far as passers but it didnāt change specifically to accommodate him because he was so good.Ā
So just because point guards shot the 3 before Steph Curry, that means that he didn’t change the way the game is played?
Yeah bro everybody knows that Steph Curry modeled his game after Chris Ford, who made the first 3 pointer in NBA history. Smh another copycat player.
He didnāt change the way the game was played lol. He entered the league at the perfect time to take advantage of a change that was already taking place. All you have to do is look back at what the 7 second or less Suns were doing or what the Dwight Howard Magic did in the late 2000ās, both of which took place well before Curryās prime.Ā
So what youāre saying is that the game has been the same ever since its conception and there has been no innovation through singular players?
No, I wouldnāt say any modern NBA player has really innovated anything single handedly. Early NBA,when things were still up in the air and nothing was quite decided yet as far as how the game would be played, could be influenced by early outlier players like Mikan or Wilt. There is nothing particularly innovative about moving off ball like Curry (Ray Allen, Rip Hamilton, Reggie Miller etc all did it before Curry) or being a volume shooter relative to era (again, Ray Allen did it before him as did Reggie Miller.) Team focused 3 point shooting was a component of the 7 second or less Suns and part of the design of the Magicās offense with Dwight Howard in that they used 4 shooters to surround Dwight, two of which were 6ā10ā guys, and one of which acted as a pseudo-point forward in Hedo Turkoglu. So no, Curry just came around at the perfect time to take advantage of a slowly progressing league wide trend towards more 3 point shooting and space.Ā
To quote Gilbert Arenas: get the fuck out of here
[deleted]
Nope, centers are expected to shoot and be able to pass the ball a little
A fucking monster. I hate to see the day we lose him in the league
This Jokic guy might be pretty goodĀ
Insane stuffĀ
He’s definitely in the same tier as Jrue Holiday
Jrue is cheaper though, so…
and he doesnt get distracted by ponies
I donāt know manā¦ Jokic didnāt even qualify to play for team USAā¦
Not as good as Taco Bell.
Taco Bell trolled him coming into the game tonight with a queserito sitting out as he was walking into the arena lmao.
Fat cone
Scoring a basketball makes one person happy and assist makes 2 people happy. My man loves to pass
It’s funny that 4 years later people forgot this quote.
A true representative of Yugoslavian basketball school - pass, pass, pass…
Pass pass pass talk trash to the referee pass pass pass
Wich als sets you up for a coaching career - yell, yell, yell… at them to pass the ball.
How far is he from 10K
Roughly 5.5 seasons away at 10 APG. If no major injuries and he remains at this pace he could hit it at age 36 by the end of the 2030-31 season.
30/10/10 all said and done?
30 will be the hardest to see I think, if the nuggets ever decide to get a tertiary scorer his ppg will plummet
even 20/10/10 for a career is diabolical, 30/10/10 is hard even in nba2k lol
Eh his 30 ppg is hyper efficient, he already doesn’t take alot of shots. Nuggets having a tertiary scorer only means a guy who doesn’t miss as much
They don’t mean 30 ppg, they meant 30000/10000/10000
He is just under 17k points. He might hit the 25/10/8 club.
If he makes it to 9062 assists on his career that will put him at top 10 all time assists.
To make it in top 25, he is still about 1100 assists short. He could hit that mark by mid next season.
https://www.espn.com/nba/history/leaders/_/stat/assists
So it isnāt going to happen.
Lolol more Jokic hate from Awanderingleaf, color me shocked. Ever think of just taking some threads off from commenting?
Yeah, just go to my comment history and youāll see the time I took off.Ā
Maybe Reddit isnāt good for your mental health. The negativity you have is alarming. Thereās no award for being eeyore in life.
Criticism = negativity. Always glazing = Positivity :)Ā
Jobless behaviour
I donāt get paid for comments so the time off from Reddit didnāt hurt my financial situation, but thanks for the concern.
Best player on the planet.
not just that, in the world even
Hard to believe that there is a better player in the universe.
It gets better. Even counting Forwards, there’s only 3 players ahead of him: LeBron James (10834), Scottie Pippen (6135) and Larry Bird (5695). This means that Jokic could end up 2nd in total assists by a non-Guard by the end of this season, behind only LeBron.
He needs 474 assists and there are 56 games left. Assuming he misses 5 (zero so far), still needs to average less than 10 while in reality is averaging over 10 for a long time. Looks realistic af
Yeah exactly. It’s scary how fast he can rack those up.
terrifying
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say he’s the goat passer anymore
I’m sure there’s a case to be made but at the same time, there are 49 guys with more career assist and 28 with higher career APG. The fact he’s there as a big man is ridiculous though, not to mention he’s only 30.
He’ll definitely creep up on career assists by the time he retires. I’m no expert on the guys with higher APG than him but I think by the eye test the sheer quality of his average pass is just so up there. You’ll watch some highlights of Jokic playing some nothing burger regular season game and his third or fourth best pass of the game will be on somebody else’s career highlights
For sure, I swear there’s at least one highlight from every game that makes me go how is that even humanly possible. If he plays 75 games per season until he’s 35, averaging 10 APG, he’d be around 9200 career assists, which would land him at the 10th spot, and 8.2 career APG, around 15th all-time. The competition is just that tough. But the fact that we’re even discussing it shows how unbelievable he is.
Ahh, I see why- his APG started out pretty low and climbed to where it is over time compared to guys like CP3 and magic
Yeah, that’ll do it. If we’re talking about peaks only, this has got to be up there, though.
These moments when I see some Bron number and go “wtf, wow?!?” are becoming more and more common.
Fuck LeBron though.
He gonna shatter the record
Greatest offensive peak, best center in league history
lol he isnāt even a top 5 center in NBA history. Give me a break.
Heās definitely borderline top 5.
For all of NBA history defense at the center position has consistently been the most important defensive position on the court and he is one of the worst 7 foot stars we have seen when it comes to protecting the basket. There are far too many fantastic 2 way centers in NBA history for him to be anywhere close to top 5.
Who are your top 5?
Haha nothing but crickets. Got em
when all that goat peak shit ends up in one ring it’s going to hard to argue for it
Especially when no one with a brain would choose any Jokic season over 2016 Steph or 2013 LeBron. Any advanced analytic that says otherwise is flawed.
When people talk about records that will never be broken, this one better be included. Genuinely an impossible record to beat by the time his career is over.
Is it though? He’s the first point center but I doubt he’ll be the last.
He’s done this in 770 games… Do you realize how crazy that is? He still has AT LEAST 5 seasons to go
He is the first because he entered the league at the right time, a time when positional expectations arenāt as stringent. If the pace continues to climb and defense becomes even more neutered going forward with less positional expectations, there is no reason a center wonāt come along with more career assists.
No I disagree, I looked it up and for like the first 7 years in his career, he averaged only 6 assists, presumably because he started slow and also Jokic type bigs werenāt nearly as common. He is 30-31 now, I can definitely see him retire earlier than expected instead of going to like age 40 even though his playstyle would probably allow him to.
So if a Jokic type C comes into the league early, plays a lot more games (assuming Jokic retires early), and averages a lot of assists from day 1 instead of having the first half of their career being a slower start, I think they could do it.
better passer than Lebron
Grass is green
Lebron ain’t even top 5.. While Jokic is very easily at 1.
Magic and Nash are the closest to Big Honey but they are still like a good 100 bbiq points below him.
insane amounts of glaze holy fuck. “a good 100 bbiq points below him” lmao this mfer really is the most overrated player of all time
Have you seen him play?
Lebron called him the GOAT.
KG called him “Modern Wilt”.
SVG called him the GOAT.
Steve Kerr called him the GOAT.
Will Barton called him “Big Honey”.
Artificial Intelligence has him as the BOAT. Potentially future GOAT.
I could go on and on. I recommend just watching the Nuggets play basketball.
Lebron called him the most complete player he’s played against you dolt. Where did you get goat from that? Not a good day for reading comprehension.
Also artificial intelligence? Okay you are too far gone.
Man this makes me embarrassed to have Nuggets flair lmao
LeBron has made every pass in Jokicās bag for 23 years now, try again
Lebron is nothing like Jokic as a passer. Jokic has hundreds of passes that Lebron could only dream of making.
Jokic passes with fluidity and understanding of time and space.
Lebron is more like Luka where pieces on the board are designated.
They ain’t close to Jokic’s level.
Not a chance lmao. Lebron is definitely a better passer
Are you watching the game right now?
LeBron is an all-time great passer, but Jokic is possibly the best I’ve ever evaluated. Or at least clearly in the top 3 along with Magic and Nash. Without question he has the best pure vision I’ve ever seen.
Can you explain your evaluation process
lmaorotfcopter
Congratulations Nikola Jokic most assists by a center in NBA HISTORY passing Kareem Abdul Jabbar
5,661 & counting
Yup, thatās what the post said
771 games for GOATic
1560 games for Kareem
To clarify, he passed Kareem? It wasnāt mentioned before.
I believe he had 7 assists against the magic when he broke the record
Fr? Was that in the post?
Thanks Magic
Have to imagine 10% of every thread are bots
Nikola GOATic
What breaks first. Lebron’s scoring record, or whatever this ends up being.
LeBron’s hip bones, get the man a walker
2020 called, they want their comment back.
With the pace at which players are scoring these days, Iād bet on the scoring record
For sure the scoring record. A player that can score like LeBron could come around in the next 50 or so years. But another center that can pass like Jokic? Weād be lucky if we ever saw that again
My thing is that I think we’re gonna see a surge in big man who can pass exceptionally well, maybe not as good as Jokic, but still point guard esc.
I find it really hard to believe another player can average 27+ppg for 1570+ games. Like this is Lebron’s first year to average under 20ppg, and last year was his first time since his rookie season that he averaged less than 25ppg. It also means they’d have to be very well conditioned and non-injury prone for at least the first 15 or so seasons of their career. To put that into perspective, from Lebron’s first season to his first major injury in 2018 (15th season), he only missed around 80 games. Luka’s already missed 120 games in 8 seasons.
Most career triple doubles by a center:
Jokic 177
Wilt 78
Domantas Sabonis 45
Kareem 21
Russell 17
This Domantas stat only takes in consideration his time in the NBA, right?
I don’t know how to check this, but I would assume Statmuse does not include Spanish Pro League stats
It took 40 years for Kareem’s mark to be passed. This record will probably last even longer when JokiÄ is done.
Most assists per game by a center in a career (min 400 games):
Jokic - 7.4
Wilt - 4.4
Russell - 4.3
Why doesn’t nba.com have this on the front page?Ā I couldn’t find any mention about it on the site, not even in the recap of the Magic/Nuggets game (at least when I checked).
The Lakers throttled the Jazz tonight and Lebron looked good, so that’s story 1-5
But what does LeBron think of this Jokic achievement?
Man can pass the ball with the best of em. If Gandalf plays basketball I bet his game would look like Jokic’s
Nah Gandalf is a perimeter defender. He’s got that famous line about it.Ā
Im surprised he didnt already have it
Keep in mind Kareem needed > 2x as many games to do it.
Yeah, or in other words, Jokic averages more than twice as many assists per game as Kareem, which isn’t that surprising to me
Already? Props to him.
Not surprising but still crazy he did it so quickly
Itās weird seeing on of that greatest players of all time do it in real time.Ā
On pace to become second only person with career 20k triple double (behind Bron obviously who has 40/10/10 ).
would’ve loved to watch it but i’m blacked out for living 200 miles from orlando!
fuck you, silver
In what year do we predict players will stop listing themselves by traditional positions lol games evolving today as we speak
AmazingĀ
What a Goat. Good job, Joker.
Is it close?
FUCK NO.
No shade. He has a ton of impressive stats, but this isnāt that impressive to me.
How many centers in NBA history have gotten to be the primary ball handlers?
The ones good enough at playmaking to be.
I believe Nikola has another year on his contract. Then he will sign a 5 yr max for approximately \(400M, that's \)80M a season. Then his NBA career will be over. He might play in the Serbian league or ABA for a season later. So get your calculators out and you might be able to figure out where he might end up as far as points, rebounds, assists and steals. Finally keep an eye on his PER, he is above Michael Jordan now, but his numbers should come down in his final few years.Ā
Inflated stats era
Overrated, no D