Nikola Jokic led the Denver Nuggets to their first championship in franchise history of 47 years, in the recently concluded NBA Finals. After missing out on what would have been his 3rd consecutive MVP award, the Serbian giant continued his brilliance of the regular season, where he led the Nuggets to finish as the best in the West. He became the first big man since Shaquille O’Neal (in 2002) to win Finals MVP. After the Nuggets’ win over the Heat on Monday, ‘The Big Aristotle’ welcomed ‘The Joker’ into the big man alliance that includes some of the greatest bigs of all time apart from him. However, within hours of doing so, he also shared his statistics from the ’02 Finals in a side-by-side comparison with Jokic’s 2023 numbers.
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Shaquille O’Neal of 2001-02 compared to 2022-23 Nikola Jokic
In the 2001-02 season, a 2x Finals MVP, Shaquille O’Neal, led the Los Angeles Lakers to the NBA Finals averaging 28.5 points, 12.6 rebounds, and 2.8 assists in 19 games in the tournament, upping his ante in the four games of the Finals. He shared his Finals numbers comparing it with Jokic’s recently on his Instagram. You can find the screenshot of the same in the tweet by @NBACelebsUpdate below
Shaq compares his last Finals MVP stats (the last by any big before jokic) to Jokic’s FMVP stats pic.twitter.com/iAGYo5ACZQ
— What are NBA Celebs Upto? (@NBACelebsUpdate) June 14, 2023
Nikola Jokic averaged 30 points, 13.5 rebounds, 9.5 assists, 1.1 steals, and a block per game in the 20 post-season games. His numbers were already too good to improve significantly in the 5 Finals games, but he did.
Both the Finals MVPs’ runs were iconic for their teams. Both teams lost just 4 games in their post-season. And the biggest similarity of all was, both O’Neal and Jokic had young and hungry 2-guards playing behind them who shared the bulk of scoring responsibility with them. Really, there was no way either of these big men was winning these championships without Kobe Bryant and Jamal Murray.
The Big Man Alliance
Shaq welcomed The Joker to a small club that consists of the greatest big men of the NBA, including himself, Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, and David Robinson. The big man alliance. Take a look at Shaquille O’Neal’s Instagram post on the topic below.
View this post on Instagram
It’s one of the biggest U-turns Shaq had to take as an analyst as he had to go from calling the Serbian international ‘Slavic Lasagna’ to the best player in the league in just a few months time.
