he still never got his proper respect until last year. there was always a line of fans, pundits, and players eager to tell you why embiid or giannis or luka is better, or to leave jokic out of their top five current players, and things like that. he’s been as good as lebron ever was for years now, and lebron’s only question was, “is he has good as/better than michael jordan”, not, “am i as an espn/fs1/etc nba analyst going to put devin booker or jayson tatum ahead of nikola jokic on my top 5 players in the nba heading into 2022”.
lets call it what it is: it’s a big, slow white guy with seemingly zero personality who plays in the mountain time zone, so people either downplayed and downgraded everything he did, or truthfully for a lot of people they just straight up never watched his games yet still had an opinion on him. people in this thread are talking about him being a top 10 player ever (as they should be) when the reality is that two years ago that devin booker/jayson tatum stuff was actually happening. it really took until last year for everyone to just admit that he’s the best despite him having been the best player for 4-5 years now. i’m not sure there’s ever been a more dominant player in any sport ever who got less respect than nikola jokic did up until about a year ago.