In the wake of the Minnesota Timberwolves' surprising utter domination of the reigning champion Denver Nuggets, there's been a narrative going around that Nikola Jokic isn't really a good playoff performer, as evidenced by him having never beat a team with 50+ regular season wins in the playoffs. This seemed a little silly to me as I thought he had just "proven" his playoff bonafides en route to his first Finals victory last year after being doubted for years. However, memories are short, so I figured I'd dive into the stats and see what the truth was. I'm going to compare him to his only true competition; the only two other guys that have won an MVP since 2018, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid. Just for simplicity's sake, we'll be looking at the last five years of playoffs, when each of them was roughly at their peak and they're a little easier to compare 1 to 1. If I say "ever" in this article, just know I mean "in this 5 year sample size we're looking at," I just don't feel like typing it out every time.

Firstly, it IS true that Jokic has never beaten a 50+ win team in the playoffs. However, neither has Joel Embiid, and Giannis Antetokounmpo has only done it once, coming back from a 2-0 deficit to beat the 51-win Phoenix Suns in the Finals. Suffice it to say none of the three has beaten a 50+ win team in their own conference before; both the Bucks and Nuggets made a run to the Finals by beating <50 win teams, and the Bucks just happened to have a slightly better opponent in front of them when they arrived there, but both teams took care of business. Regardless, the Bucks/76ers/Nuggets are a combined 1-8 in series against 50+ win teams in the past 5 years, so it's clear it's not easy. That shouldn't necessarily be a black mark on Jokic specifically, when he's not particularly different from the other two.

However, that's a pretty surface-level analysis. Just final outcome in a few series? We can be more thorough than that. Let's look at each game below, including games against teams with <50 wins.

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Look at games or series, and it's clear that the Nuggets are the best at dominating teams with <50 wins. They literally have not lost a series against them. When they're faced with a team they should beat, they do. Easy peasy.

The Bucks and 76ers look much more similar, and much less dominant than the Nuggets against these teams. One of the losses was to the 44 win Miami Heat in 2020 after a season when the Bucks won 56 games and secured the 1-seed. Giannis did sustain a nasty ankle sprain in game 4 that prevented him from finishing the series, but they were down before that happened as well. Ironically, that game 4 where Giannis exited with an injury was the only game they won in the series; the Heat have seemingly had Giannis's number, but we'll get to that later. The other two series losses against <50 win teams were both in the past two years. Giannis has missed all but 3 games in the last two playoffs - resulting in two "upset" first round losses to the 44 win Heat and 47 win Pacers. Some might not count those series/game losses as "on Giannis" for the purpose of a comparison like this, so you're welcome to mentally exclude them if you want. Alternatively, maybe you think the best ability is availability, and if a guy like Embiid or many other stars can catch flak for playing through injuries in the playoffs, Giannis can catch it for being out of the games entirely. Either way, we'll be moving onto more detailed stats later that won't be affected by the games he missed, so stick around if you're a Giannis fan.

The 76ers have similar "asterisks," if you want to call them that. Everyone remembers the ill-fated loss in 7 to the 2021 Hawks, punctuated by Ben Simmons failing to dunk over Trae Young, getting thrown under the bus by Glenn Rivers, and being gone shortly thereafter. Being your team's fourth-leading scorer in the playoffs behind Tobias Harris and Seth Curry isn't the best look for Simmons; the less said about this series (easily the most embarrassing one of this era for the 76ers) the better.

The other series loss to a <50 win team was a brutal 0-4 sweep at the hands of the 48-win 2020 Celtics the year before. Embiid actually played decently, averaging 30-12 after only averaging 23-12 during the regular season, but they got the doors blown off them regardless. 76ers fans can claim many excuses; this was before Embiid even got a single MVP vote so it wasn't really his prime yet, it came during the dreaded "Al Horford double agent" year, their 2nd best player (Ben Simmons) was out for the whole series, their 2nd-5th leading scorers for that series were (in order) Josh Richardson, Tobias Harris, Shake Milton, and Alec Burks... but a loss is still a loss. Denver has had some poor supporting casts around Jokic, but he still never has lost to a team like that. The 2022 Nuggets with Monte Morris, Will Barton, Aaron Gordon, and DeMarcus Cousins (granted, around a reigning MVP version of Jokic) is probably the most comparable, but they drew a tougher team in the first round in the eventual champion 50+ win Warriors, losing to them in 5.

Now let's turn our attention back to series against other true contenders.