Nikola Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are each chasing history in their own way this season. They're locked into the top two spots in the MVP race and, at this point, miles ahead of anyone else. If Gilgeous-Alexander wins, he'd join a legendary list of just 13 players to win back-to-back MVPs. If Jokić wins, he'd have his fourth MVP, something only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, LeBron James and Wilt Chamberlain have accomplished.
But MVPs aren't the only ways these two are chasing history this season. There's a plausible argument that we're also watching the two greatest offensive seasons ever, at the same time.
No one is as efficient as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging 32.4 points, 6.4 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game and is within striking distance of a 50/40/90 season — 55.9 percent from the field, 43.2 percent from beyond the arc and 87.9 percent from the free throw line. If he's able to pull that off, he'd become just the second player in NBA history to score at least 30 points per game on 50/40/90 shooting percentages. The other was Steph Curry in 2015-16, when he became the NBA's first-ever unanimous MVP.
But even if he falls a few percentage points short in one of those three categories, his overall efficiency is on a completely different level. The graph below shows every player who has ever averaged 30+ points per game for a full season, marked by their true shooting percentage.
SGA is on pace for the best true shooting percentage ever by a 30-point scorer, and by a pretty significant margin. The only player who is even close is Curry, again in 2015-16, when he averaged 30.1 points per game on a 66.9 true shooting percentage.
In theory, there's a somewhat defined linear relationship between points scored and efficiency. The more points you score, the harder it is to do efficiently — you're going to draw more defensive attention, you're going to have to take more shots and more tough shots. For example, you could draw a neat diagonal from the top point on that chart (Wilt's 50-point season in 1962) to the point just below SGA (Curry in 2015-16). That line would represent the theoretical outer boundary of that linear relationship.
And now you can see that what Gilgeous-Alexander is doing isn't just chasing records, he's single-handedly re-drawing the boundary for what's possible in high-volume, high-efficiency scoring. If you take into account both the results (points) and the opportunity cost (the shots he needs to take to get those points) what we're watching is the greatest scoring season in NBA history.
It seems almost silly to tack on 6.4 assists per game, creating 17.7 additional points for his team — more than point guards like Jalen Brunson, De'Aaron Dox or Darius Garland. He is a uniquely efficient and uniquely productive offensive force.
But he's not doing as much as Nikola Jokić
Jokić is on track to average a triple-double for the second consecutive season, and is leading the league in both rebounds and assists. He's not quite over the 30-point threshold, but he's close — averaging 29.6 points, 12.3 rebounds and 10.9 assists per game. And his true-shooting percentage, incredibly, dwarfs even SGA's — 71.6. Again, he's four-tenths of a point below the cut-off, but here's what that chart above would look like with Jokić added.
I misspoke earlier when I said SGA was "single-handedly re-drawing the boundary" — he and Jokić are doing it together, and Jokić is the one who is leading the way.
He probably won't do enough at the free throw line to get to 50/40/90, but he's at least in the ballpark at 61.2 percent from the field, 42.6 percent on 3-pointers and 84.0 percent at the free throw line. And, again, he's leading the league in assists. He's passing is creating 27.3 points per game for the Nuggets. Combined with his own scoring, that's 56.9 points per game and at a level of efficiency we've never seen before.
For all the ways in which advanced stats have worked their way into the vernacular and consciousness of NBA fans, things like true shooting percentage still aren't entirely organic. In terms of counting stats, Jokić and SGA are in elite but not unprecedented territory. After a decades-long drought, we've seen multiple season-long triple-doubles from Russell Westbrook and Jokić. SGA's 30+ points and 6+ rebounds aren't historic in and of themselves — Michael Jordan did it three times, Allen Iverson did it, Luka Dončić did it, LeBron James did it.
But if you're open to expanding your basketball understanding, just a bit, and making space for the idea of efficiency — then you just might recognize you're watching the two best offensive seasons we've ever seen.