Nikola Jokic (26/17/14 on 64.5% TS, 4-0 record) and Jayson Tatum (26/10/7 on 56.4% TS, 3-0 record) named NBA Players of the Week
https://www.threads.com/@nba/post/DWhUONNgbO9/nba-players-of-the-week-for-week-west-nikola-jokic-nuggets-east-jayson-tatum
Joker is ridiculous
Some people online were saying Wemby surpassed him, I love Wemby but let’s be fr, he ain’t on Jokic level just yet, Jokic still the best player in the world imo.
It’s incredibly hard to quantify Wemby’s defensive impact while it’s incredibly easy to quantify Jokic’s offence and defence.
Jokić has also proven it at the highest level. Wemby deserves a chance, but he’s gotta take it
NBA FOs are looking to hire geniuses like you
Ppl are allowed to think that, I don’t agree but Wemby is incredible as well and it certainly isn’t the worst take.
Not exactly a great take though, Jokic is required to do so much more for his team to win which shows in the minutes played
So it’s Wemby’s fault he plays on a better team?
It’s not his fault but if Jokic was averaging 29min a game, nuggets would be in the playin
blatantly false, wembys increasing his teams win wins by far more than jokic 💀
Based on?
Wemby higher on off is my guess
this is just blatantly false, jokic increases his teams win% by 1%, wemby does 10+%. The nuggets with their biggest stretch of injuries won 62.5% and the healthy nuggets with jokic are at 63%
Context matters.
The Nuggets played the weakest part of their schedule without Jokic.
I feel like my comment separates the people who watch and understand basketball and those who don’t so easily
What even is this comment lmao
Yeah, Wemby had an off shooting week and only put up…23/15/4/2/4 while his team went 3-0.
Scrub.
With four consecutive road wins of 25+
Wemby is only 22 so him even being in an arguable situation with Jokic already is insane
I would disagree. Wembys defensive impact is just too important
They played the jazz(they had to sit filipowski because he was gonna get them the win), the warriors, the mavs, and the suns(who have been bad recently)
Wembys defense is in such a different stratosphere that he has clearly surpassed everyone else as players, averaging a double double with that level of defense makes him the best player in the world
his defense is 2 tiers above the other mvp candidates but his offense is also still 2 tiers behind jokic, luka, sga in terms of how godlike they are on that end
Nah, he is the best defender in the league by a mile and is good on offense, they are elite in offense but he may be th best defender ever and still gives prime tim Duncan offense. He is above them due to his all time defense
Are you like 12 years old? Best defender ever?
Best defender since bill Russell, his impact on the game mirrors only bill
Ok. Now I understand. You’re just a troll.
Cope lil bro, if joker was a top 3 offensive player ever with mediocre defense he wouldn’t be better then Wemby, Wemby is top 3 defensive player ever with good offense. He’s the best in the world and has brung back people caring about defense
It’s really not that hot of a take. Not that I treat his word as gospel, but Zach Lowe said essentially the same thing last week. Obviously Wemby needs to do it for several years to take that title, but there’s enough sample size to say that he’s the most impactful defender of all time on a per game basis
Is there any data to support that?
It’s Jokic and Shai as tied for #1 in the world until one of them wins again, goes on a finals run at least or someone else enters the fray with a strong run
Jamal has more skill than FTA
Bruh why post like this? This is why people hate our fanbase.
It’s true
murray averages less points, less efficiency, worse defense and significantly less offensive gravity
stop it lol
yeah but he does look a lot cooler doing it and sometimes goes off for 50 without shooting 20+ fts
This guy is averaging 28/13/11 on 67.4% fucking TS on a team that has been absolutely ravaged by injuries still fighting for the third seed in a bloodbath of a conference and I’m supposed to believe he’s barely a top 3 MVP candidate right now because he had like two weeks of being mortal after an injury?
pre-injury, he had the best offensive run of all time
pre injury 23⁄24 embiid and wilt are up there
pre injury Embiid was literally against a piss easy east schedule + like 14 free throws a game. It was one helluva run though. He does amazing things when it matters the least 😭
he averaged 33.7 PPG on 64.8% TS against top 10 defenses that year
Please bring up the numbers of games and what teams. Because i remember the schedule was insanely weak. Sixers schedule was super backloaded and he only played in first half of the season.
It’s that competitive at the top. I’d have him comfortably top 3 if my influential opinion eases your mind
I truly believe that if he had his February stats in the first month of the season, then the injury, and then came back and was putting up the stats he had in the first two months of the irl season (when he was otherworldly), he’d be the runaway favorite despite his overall stats being the same in both scenarios. Timing is the only thing keeping him from his 4th MVP, because most voters and fans have a memory to rival that of Leonard in Memento.
Or if he played in LA. The media would talk non-stop about how no one has ever led the NBA in rebounds and assists, how this is a once in a lifetime achievement, that anything less than unanimous MVP is indicative of brain damage on the part of the voters.
Absolutely. I mean, pre-injury we weren’t talking about just MVP, we were talking about one of the greatest seasons ever in NBA history. If you switch around the order of things and Jokic was in that form right now he’d be runaway favorite.
Yeah the timing really does impact the vote. We saw it with r the Embiid mvp. It was a close enough race but Jokic was the favourite for majority of that year, then nuggets go 0-4 (Jokic missed 2 of them) and had their seed secured and Embiid makes a late surge.
Whomever gets fourth in the MVP race will rightfully feel robbed
Unfortunately the other 3 candidates above him are doing stuff just as crazy
That’s really what it comes down too. MVP is inherently a zero sum award. You can never look at what one person is doing without putting it relative to what others have done over the same time.
You’re downvoted for being reasonable smh
I mean, there’s no reason why Shai or Wemby should be there. Luka has a case but it’s a weaker case than the Joker. It’s just voter fatigue atm, they can’t see him get as many as Bron
shai is ahead of jokic in multiple advanced stats and has simply still played a lot more than him
his total value is ahead of jokic in almost everything and his team is 17-3 in their last 20 games
26/17/14 on 64.5% TS
Yes i’m biased and a massive homer…….but amidst all the tearing down other players to prop up your MVP candidate……maybe appreciate what this guy is doing.
Not sure you will see anyone who consistently puts these kind of stat lines on a nightly basis again.
I don’t know how you’d ever find it, but has there been a 4-game stat line like this……..ever?
Is it even Joker’s best 4 game peak?
I’m lazy and just looking at earlier this season. Between Nov 3 and Nov 11 the Nuggets went 6-0 with Jokic averaging:
35.8 PTS 12.0 REB 11.0 AST 1.8 STL 0.7 BLK
which may not seem as crazy as this streak but he did it with these shooting splits:
79.8 2P% 55.6 3P% 85.7 FT% 83 TS%
Which is an average of a 39 Game Score on BBRef
Just this season I found a 4-game stretch where he averaged 38/14/9 on 75.6 TS%… and another 4-game stretch where he averaged 33/14/14 on 74.2% TS. 6 game stretch including that first one where he went for 36/14/11 on 75.3% TS too lmao. These don’t even feel real even though I watched the games.
Good stuff.
Maybe I should instead ask if anyone ELSE has put up a 4 game line like that.
I mean, you could go the Wilt route
Of course.
i dont have the stats handy but im confident it’s not, which is a testament to his profound greatness. jokic is the new curry for completely destroying the league. sga is a menace though, even if you throw out like 6 of his ftas per game he is INCREDIBLE. and as much as i love joker all of these things are just true.
Some modern close calls:
Westbrook had 26.8⁄15.3⁄13.0 on 46.4% TS from November 26 to December 4, 2016
Westbrook had 22.3⁄17.3⁄18.3 on 53.0% TS from May 3 to May 8, 2021
Jokic had 29.5⁄15.8⁄14.5 on 66.5% TS from November 4 to November 10, 2024
There’s also any number of insane Oscar/Wilt stretches (e.g. Wilt had 33.8⁄23.8⁄14.0 on 67.6% TS from March 15 to March 19, 1968)
For a 4 game sample size? Oh definitely. Hell Westbrook used to have some of the craziest POTW numbers I had ever seen back in his prime. Just looking at his MVP season; February of 2017 he had a 4 game span averaging 35/15/13 while even shooting 45% from 3 on high volume, he was insane back then.
Luka and Harden have both had some spans of absurd PTS/REB/AST numbers too
IMO even if Jokic doesn’t win MVP (mostly just due to Denver being like a ~50 win team) he’s still the clear best player in the league. His defence is fine, if underwhelming, and what he does on offense (and on the glass) is just fucked up.
26/17/14 would be a ridiculous statline for a single game, and Jokic AVERAGED that over 4 games. Unreal shit man
So numb to it because its him 🃏
I don’t know if Tatum’s stats are generally POTW worthy (and haven’t looked into the other potential candidates), but he played decent and the Celts beat a red hot Thunder, Hawks, and Hornets team. Record usually matters most in POTW and beating those 3 teams, especially when down Brown and White in some of those games is worthy of an award.
Glad to see Tatum looking like himself, even if you can still see quite a bit of rustiness (mostly on defense lately).
You can literally see how gassed Tatum is by halftime–he doesn’t even try to hide it. After possessions, he does this upward thousand-yard stare, takes a couple slow strides, puts his head down, then starts jogging the other direction as if the hardwood was mud.
That he’s doing as well as he is while quite clearly not ready from a conditioning standpoint is kind of amazing. With a full strength team, having Tatum operating as the primary playmaker, while being functional on defense at the point of attack and expending most of his energy on that side of the ball on the glass, they will be dangerous
I notice it a lot as a helpside defender. He hasn’t put much energy at trying protect the rim and if another player gets beat he isn’t hustling to contest the shot. Which tbf, isn’t me complaining. He’s still ramping up and his cardio still isn’t there so he’s picking his spots.
But yeah it’s good to see him play this well lately knowing he is still exhausted out there. The gastank should get better the longer the season goes. So hopefully we see him add more and more back to his game.
I wish Black also played on Celtics being down both White and Brown
I wish Green was also on the Celtics 😭
Imagine Red still roaming the Celtics sidelines.
And my boy, Blue.
Vander Blue, specifically
POTW means nothing really but tbf other stars in the East either had a losing week or are injured so yeah JT playing somewhat decent and beating good teams probably won it
Our game right before that just made me more confused about the Wolves tbh. Totally shut down Brown and Tatum without Ant, make the Boston role players look pedestrian, and right smack in the middle of getting torched by Tobias Harris and Donavan Clingon
Personally I’d say that Payton was more important for the Cs on these 3 wins than Jayson to be fair, so he got the sympathy vote in.
The PP dickriding must stop. No way you watched last nights game and thought PP was more important.
Neither were that important. The C’s would’ve won these games without either of them
As a Celtics fan, I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to see JT like this.
Even as a celtics hater I’m happy to see him back and hooping, he’s fun to watch
Basketball is better when the best players play.
very inspirational, came back and also fully back. another kind of alient tbh, what a team this Celtics is.
Jokic putting up 2K MyCareer numbers wtf
Pretty normal Jokic week all things considered… just had to lock in for a lil to remind people who he is.
It’s the haircut
And he’s still clearly not 100%
Which he doesnt. he slept walked the game vs Jazz and usually just still locks in for one quarter only.
I agree this is just pretty normal Jokic stats.
wtf are those numbwrs
Tatum came back 3 weeks ago from what for most players can be considered a career ruining injury
Good for tatum. And sheesh jokic is looking like wizards russ hes on fire
Low key he is the MVP again
Which one?
Jokic, of course
Iguodala
Bro honestly said which one 🤣
Jayson Tatum
26/10/7 is such a good week. Amazing week, LITERALLY MVP level stat line.
Meanwhile Jokic runs up 26/17/14 like every other week lol.
He is so good.
Jokic should be mvp
Best in the world until Wemby can knock him off and I don’t know when that will be.
Depends just as much on Jokić slowing down as Wemby speeding up
Next season 🤞
Sixers flairs always give me so much life. To think about how close the 1v1 debate was with you toxic fanboys, only to see our guy absolute shit on that 1v1 for the next 3 years…. It’s hilarious
And people try to say SGA is better lol
I mean, SGA is absurd. There’s not a single shot he can’t make, everything he puts up, no matter how ridiculous, I just assume is going in … because it usually does. He’s all-world.
Jokic is somehow better. It’s insane. Insane how good he is. Insane how it’s taken for granted. No matter the accolades he gets now, future generations will think it wasn’t close to what he deserved.
SGA is a turd?
To be fair the Nuggets last three games have been against Golden State, Dallas, and Utah. That’s about the easiest gauntlet of games you could get in the West right now.
The kings and wizards still exist
Edit: damn I just checked the standings and the Pacers and Nets are worse than the kings. I was not familiar with their game
Westbrook had a 5 game stretch where he averaged
35/12/14
I just checked a random stretch during his mvp year so I’m sure there could be a better stretch
Edit: I meant to respond to a comment that asked if a statline like this ever happened. I wasn’t just throwing a random thing out there lol
What was his TS%?
Edit: to all the downvoters, it isn’t a gotcha - I’m just asking for the one other stat presented in the OP that has been omitted here.
I don’t know I didn’t calculate it I just went and looked at his MVP season and looked at a random good 5 game stretch
You just need the total points, total shot attempts, and total free-throws: https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/stats/tsp_calc.html
It’s the TS% as well that’s insane
You’re never gonna see this again once Joker retires soooo…Enjoy his basketball mastery while you still can!
I haven’t been able to watch the Celtics much at all, but how is Tatum moving compared to his pre-injury status? It’s really good to see him putting up these numbers.
Guys, their TS% are the same just shifted one number over… do you realize what this means for Luka’s mvp case???
But but..Wemby?..and Doncic?..and nearly anyone else in the west who plays defence..something something..
Jokic should not be out of the top 3. His numbers are absurd.
How’s that fourth seed treating you?
You don’t have to cry victim stuff. It’s sore winning. All those players are amazing.