This will be difficult for anyone to achieve!
Source: USA TODAY Sports / ddp USA / Profimedia
The Denver Nuggets lost to Utah 111:124, and Nikola Jokić wrote another page in NBA history regardless. The best basketball player in the world scored 27 points, with 11 rebounds and six assists, and that was enough to become the youngest player in NBA history to score more than 13,000 points, grab more than 6,000 rebounds and dish out more than 4,000 assists.
Nikola Jokić is currently 28 years old, on February 19 he will turn 29, and that is exactly how old the previous record holder, Lebron James, was, who achieved all of the above a few months later, when he was 29 years and 82 days old. Just being put on par with one of the greatest players in history makes Nikola one of the greatest ever, but that tally will only be settled when the years pass and he finishes his career.
At the moment, LeBron’s Lakers are in considerable trouble, and during that time, Nikola is defending the historic title with Denver, which he brought to the Nuggets last summer. Jokić is at his peak, year after year he works wonders and raises the level of his game, and the question is where he will stop. On the other hand, LeBron James does not give up and stomps even in his 40s. The “King” scores an average of 25.1 points, along with 7.2 rebounds and 7.5 assists.
Important for this comparison is that Nikola Jokić has been playing in the NBA since he was 20 years old and made his debut with 20 years and eight monthsand yes it is Lebron was 18 years and 10 months old when he played the first, historic match against the Sacramento Kings as the first “pick” in the Denver jersey. James arrived in the NBA directly from high school, which he would not have been able to do already in 2006, but would have had to go to college at least for a year, based on the still valid “one and done” rule.
Jokić wrote history – Nikola overtook even Lebron!
Source: Fonet/AP Photo/Rick BowmerNo. image: 6 1 / 6 Source: Fonet/AP Photo/Rick BowmerNo. image: 6 2 / 6 Source: Fonet/AP Photo/Rick BowmerNo. image: 6 3 / 6 AD Source: Fonet/AP Photo/Rick BowmerNo. image: 6 4 / 6 Source: Fonet/AP Photo/Rick BowmerNo. image: 6 5 / 6 Source: Fonet/AP Photo/Rick BowmerNo. image: 6 6 / 6 AD
On the other hand, Nikola Jokić started his professional career in Mega, where he arrived from KK Vojvodina in December 2012, when Lebron had already played nine years in the NBA league. And he achieved everything – to become the MVP of the ABA League in Mega and to hint at a talent the world had not seen for a long time, and then he arrived to realize it, to first become a member of Denver’s top five in front of Jusuf Nurkić, then to start dominating, giving assists changes basketball and the understanding of the position of the center… And, from last year, in 2023, to be the NBA champion. And it seems that he is hungry for new titles, so you shouldn’t add up what he has done yet – because he is still writing that history.
This season, Nikola scores 25.5 points, along with 11.8 rebounds (fourth in the NBA) and 9.2 assists (third in the NBA), while he hits 57.4 percent of his shots from the field and is the 15th most successful in the league. Lebron is still struggling and hats off to him, but this is Jokic’s time.