Well, the Denver Nuggets season has come to an end and the team unfortunately fell a tad short of their goal of making the playoffs. Still, Nuggets fans have plenty to be hopeful about in the future, and most of that hope resides in the team’s Serbian center, Nikola Jokic. His performance in the 2016-17 season have lead many fans in the Mile High to assert that we have a future all-star on our team.
But, what’s that? You say Nuggets fans are biased and of course fans in Denver are going to have high hopes for their own player? Well, that may be true. But we’re not the only ones that are enamored with Jokic. Check out the tweet below from rookie Jamal Murray, proving that the Joker is quickly getting national recognition as one of the best players in the league. That’s right, not one of the best young players or one of the best centers. One of the best players, period.
Murray shared a link to an article from theScore, which highlights the top 30 players in the league, based on this season only, according to their 7 NBA editors. Jokic is ranked 27th in the league, ahead of Mike Conley, Klay Thompson and Paul Millsap on the list. The article cites as their reasoning Jokic’s stats this season, as well as the fact that he became the first center since the NBA-ABA merger, and the first international player ever, to notch six triple-doubles in a season.
How much did Jokic surprise this season? Well, he wasn’t ranked at all by the editors in their preseason assessment/expectations and obviously made a big enough impression to make the cut.
Murray showed his pride in his teammate in the tweet, and I think we all share this pride. It’s pretty cool that Jokic is getting such widespread attention this early in his career. Check out the article on theScore.com to see who else has made the list so far, and stay tuned to see who they list as the top 10 players based on this season.
