Nikola Jokic is still the No. 1 player in basketball, and the loudest argument against him is aimed at the wrong target. ESPN's NBA Rank 2026 projects who's best for the coming season. Treating it like a scorecard for last spring is how people talk themselves into knocking the best regular-season player of this era off the top.
Start with what actually happened in April. The sixth-seeded Timberwolves beat Jokic's Nuggets 4-2, closing it out with a 110-98 Game 6, and they did it without Anthony Edwards, their best player, plus two more guards by the time the series ended. Denver was the No. 3 seed, a 54-28 team, and it went out in the first round for the first time since 2022. Jokic shot 39% over the first four games and dug his own 3-1 hole. That's the worst playoff basketball of his career, and nobody has to pretend otherwise.
Jokic didn't hide behind the injuries or the coach. Asked how much blame he takes, he said, "A lot. I needed to play better. I must play better." He waved off any shot at David Adelman: "It's not his fault we couldn't rebound. It's not his fault we couldn't catch the ball very well." A player that honest about a bad series doesn't suddenly forget how to play.
And he can play. In 2025-26 he averaged a triple-double for the second straight season, joining Russell Westbrook as the only players to do it more than once. He put up 27.7 points, 12.9 rebounds and 10.7 assists on 56.9% shooting, and led the league in both rebounds and assists. He finished second in MVP voting, which sounds like a knock until you notice he's either won the award or been runner-up in six straight seasons. Ask who's the best bet to dominate next year and the numbers point to him.
The case for Victor Wembanyama at the top is real, and it's the only one worth taking seriously. He put up 25.0 points, 11.5 rebounds and 3.1 blocks on 51.2% shooting, landed on the All-NBA First Team on 99 of 100 ballots, and dragged San Antonio all the way to the Finals before losing in five to the Knicks. He did that with a fraction of Jokic's mileage. Give it a year and this argument might flip on its own merits. But "might be better soon" is a different claim than "is better now," and the second one still belongs to Jokic.
The margin shows how thin this is. Three voting points separated Jokic, Wembanyama and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and each of them topped at least one panelist's ballot. It's a coin flip landing on the two-time triple-double machine who also happens to have the deepest track record of the three. The people screaming "pass" are describing a demotion the numbers don't support and the format doesn't ask for.
Mitchell at No. 10 is a fair thing to fight about. So is Giannis at No. 5 when he's healthy. Those are real debates about a list that mostly exists to start them. The Jokic-at-one fury is the softest complaint in the pile, because it demands the panel weigh a six-game slump over everything else the man is. They already weighed it. They watched the Timberwolves bounce him and put him first anyway, and they were right to.
