Denver Nuggets — Jokic Upgrading to a Tier 1 Star

There appears to be five stars in the NBA who can win a championship as the best player on a roster; LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and yes, I am putting Giannis Antetokounmpo on this list as well.

Nikola Jokic has been a top ten player in the NBA over the past couple of seasons, but has yet to reach that tier one level of star for the Nuggets.

As a whole, the Nuggets have a deep roster, especially if Michael Porter Jr. can produce, they have a lot of talented length.

Jokic was great in the playoffs last year, all things considered. He got slightly fatigued in that quadruple overtime game against the Portland Trail Blazers, but for the most part had a productive post season leading the Nuggets.

The greatest flaw for Jokic is his inability to take over games for the Nuggets from a scoring aspect. All of the players previously listed have the capability to grab a bull by the horns, and score multiple possessions in a row, especially late in games, to put their teams in prime position to win a game.

Due to Jokic’s lack of shape and overall lack of mobility, he struggles to score in a variety of ways and that limits the Nuggets’ offense at times. As a center, he is already at a disadvantage. Even as “Skinny Jokic” he won’t have the handle, or speed of LeBron or Kawhi.

However, if Skinny Jokic is the real deal, and it truly benefits his conditioning and mobility, his offensive and defensive games could be completely different. That could strongly influence the Nuggets’ ability to out-duel potential matchups.

There is also the possibility that he loses a lot of strength, though. Quite a bit of his game resided on the fact that he could straight up lean on a player, and over the course of the game, it would fatigue his match-up.

Now, Jokic won’t have that same weight advantage. It’ll be interesting to see if the weight loss benefits or plays to the detriment of his game. Or the simple possibility that his production remains the same for the Nuggets, just in a completely different way.