The Eighties belonged to Larry Chicken and Magic Johnson. The Nineties have been Michael Jordan’s decade. The 2000s have been dominated by Tim Duncan’s Spurs and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. From 2011 to 2020, each NBA Finals featured both LeBron James or Stephen Curry. Are the 2020s about to be Nikola Jokic’s?
The Serb has his fingerprints everywhere in the first 4 years of the last decade. In 2020, Jokic’s Nuggets made the Western Convention Finals solely to lose to the eventual champion Lakers. In 2021 and 2022, Jokic gained back-to-back MVP awards and carried his workforce to the playoffs regardless of taking part in with out an injured Jamal Murray. The minute he received Murray again in 2023, Jokic gained his first NBA Championship and Finals MVP. And now, he appears primed to go back-to-back.
Jokic leads the last decade so far in postseason rebounds, assists, double-doubles and triple-doubles, and is second solely to the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum in factors.