It's funny. Whenever an athlete is in the middle of an all-time great level of career, we kind of become immune to their awesomeness. Take Nikola Jokić, for instance. This year, he's missed the most games of his career (16), his Denver Nuggets have been gradually sliding down the standings and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has taken control of the MVP race.
Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokić is trending toward an unprecedented statistical milestone this season.
- He currently leads the league in both rebounds and assists per game, a feat no player has achieved.
- With a consistent performance in the final games, Jokić is poised to make history and redefine NBA record books.
On the surface, it can be easy to assume that he is having a down season. But that's the thing: Jokić is still doing Jokić things. He's on track to average a triple-double for the second straight season, is in the 97th percentile in scoring efficiency, and ranks first in the entire association in Offensive Estimated Plus-Minus (per Dunks & Threes).
Oh, and he's got a real shot of doing something no NBA player has done before.
No one has ever led the NBA in RPG and APG in the same season
We mentioned that triple-double stat. This season, along with his 28.6 points, Jokic is averaging 12.5 rebounds and 10.4 assists per game. Both of those marks lead the entire NBA. If this continues, Jokic will be the first player in league history to lead the association in both RPG and APG.
Some of you (probably the older ones) may be saying: That's not true! Wilt Chamberlain surely did that!
To that I say, he technically did not. In the late 1960s, Chamberlain transformed his game to be more of a facilitator. In 1967-68, he led the league in total rebounds and total assists. He also led the league in RPG (23.8). However, he did not lead the league in APG, as Oscar Robertson, who played 17 less games than Chamberlain that year, averaged more on a per game basis (9.7).
Ironically, Robertson had a chance to achieve this feat in 1961-62 (the year he averaged a triple-double), but Chamberlain's monstrous rebounding was too much for him to keep up with.
The only other person who realistically could have done it was Russell Westbrook during his peak triple-double days (2016-19). Unfortunately, the NBA hadn't fully caught on to the idea that team rebounding mattered more than individual rebounding, and you still had some archaic centers stat-padding that statistic (Hassan Whiteside and Andre Drummond).
Will Nikola Jokić Make History?
From an eligibility perspective, being a league leader in a statistical category is different than the criteria for award voting. For your numbers to be included, you need to play in at least 70 percent of your team's games (which actually sounds like a much better cutoff number for awards, by the way). So, Jokić would need to appear in at least eight of the Nuggets' final 16 games to remain eligible. Given his iron man history (*knocks wood profusely*), Jokić shouldn't have a problem reaching the game's played threshold.
I also don't foresee an issue with him maintaining his standing in these departments. As it stands, Jokic holds a 0.6 RPG lead over Karl-Anthony Towns and a 0.5 APG lead over Cade Cunningham. With roughly 16-18 games to go for all their teams, these aren't exactly runaway leads, but Jokic has always been so metronomic in his production, it is hard to envision him not continuing to tally something close to a triple-double every single night, especially with how injury-plagued the Nuggets have been this season.