Goatee Nikola Jokic Might Actually Be The Most Powerful Basketball Player Ever Created

Bart Young. Getty Images.

Back on Media Day at the end of September, I wrote a blog about how the rest of the NBA might not be ready to handle this new Goatee version of Nikola Jokic

My reason for believing this was mostly around his choice to continue this look after unleashing it during the Olympics where he was objectively unstoppable on the world stage

Well, friends, here we are. Admittedly, it's early, just around 12% of the way through the NBA season, but I feel comfortable in suggesting that we've already seen enough.

It's not as if we haven't seen a dominant version of Jokic prior to this season, of course we have. His 3x MVPs (could arguably be 4) suggest there have been plenty of dominant Jokic seasons before.

The thing is, none of them have been quite like what we are currently witnessing

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Look I don't care who your favorite player might be or who you think should be in the MVP discussion. As of right now (and for the foreseeable future) it's pretty much:

Jokic

(gap)

(then another gap)

everyone else.

Heading into the season I was of the belief that if Jokic was able to carry this version of the Nuggets to a top 4 seed, then his MVP trophy should be diamond-encrusted given what their second unit situation is. As of now, the Nuggets are +77 with Jokic on the floor and a -32 with him off and are sitting at 7-3 in the 4 spot out West with Aaron Gordon being out. That's Jokic. 

It brings up an interesting discussion because it's no secret the NBA is definitely trying to push the new age narrative, which is why guys like Luka/SGA/Tatum get a lot of the MVP narrative boost. You look at all these MVP rankings that have come out this season, you see guys like AD/SGA and Tatum all ahead of Jokic when in reality, he's been far better than all these guys to start the year. We all saw what voter fatigue did to him a few years ago when it came to the MVP, and then of course things got right back on track last season.

So the question becomes, can Jokic finally defeat MVP voter fatigue for good? Because the way things are trending, the only argument you could make for Jokic to not be the MVP is voter fatigue. You could make the case it's already robbed him of one MVP. Make no mistake, while on-the-court production is important, the NBA's MVP is first and foremost a narrative-based award. The power of a narrative boost cannot be overlooked.

But what we're seeing so far from Jokic is narrative-proof basketball. As someone who believes Jayson Tatum is playing MVP caliber basketball at the moment, he's nowhere close to Jokic's current level, and Tatum's probably #2 on most MVP ballots right now. That's the type of gap we're talking about here. 

I'd say this is surprising, but you could tell this was coming the second Jokic showed up at Media Day with that goatee. He unlocked a new version of himself that is somehow better than every other version we'd seen, and that guy was already fringe top 10 player of all time up until this point in his career. That seems pretty terrifying if you ask me.