Nikola Jokic, the center for the Denver Nuggets, was selected as the Most Valuable Player of the NBA for the 2023-24 season, making this his third honor in the past four years. As a result of this honor, he is in the company of only eight other players in the history of the league who have won the award three times. These players are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Moses Malone.

Over the course of the 2023–24 season, Jokic collected an average of 26.4 points, 9.0 assists, and 12.4 rebounds per game. In totals for those three categories, the 29-year-old player ended in the top five in the National Basketball Association (NBA), making him the first player to accomplish this feat since Chamberlain in the 1960s. Additionally, Jokic finished in the top 10 in steals.

The fact that Jokic also topped the league in Box Plus/Minus (BPM), which is an all-in-one player rating that is exclusively based on box score statistics, is maybe not surprising given the figures that have been presented above. Joel Embiid’s victory against Jokic in the previous season is one of the few exceptions to the rule that the NBA player with the highest BPM has won the Most Valuable Player award in 13 of the past 16 seasons. During past periods in the history of the NBA, when that advanced statistic would have predicted less than half of the MVP winners, this is a significant shift.

During the course of this season, Denver was able to outscore its opponents by 12.6 points per 100 possessions when Jokic was playing, but they were able to outscore them by 11.1 points per 100 possessions when Jokic was sitting on the bench. According to Cleaning the Glass, the differential of 23.7 is the greatest for any player who played at least 1,000 minutes. This is one of the players that played the most. Over the course of the last three seasons, Jokic has been the league leader in that particular metric.

With the Serb’s third victory, the most valuable player award has been awarded to an international player for the sixth consecutive year, compared to only four in NBA history previous to 2018. The four candidates that received the most votes this year were all born in countries other than the United States.

Following their defeats in Games 1 and 2 at home, Jokic’s Nuggets are currently in a 0-2 deficit against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the second round. In the event that they are unsuccessful in their series, it will be the fifth consecutive season that the league’s Most Valuable Player does not make it to the conference finals. This particular occurrence has only occurred five times in the previous 29 seasons.