Nikola Jokic still has best in the world belt, ESPN says

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has won back-to-back MVP awards. He led the Oklahoma City Thunder to a championship in 2025. He has given the Denver Nuggets his belt for two straight years. And yet, when seven ESPN experts sat down to rank the NBA’s top 100 players heading into the 2026-27 season, they still placed Nikola Jokic at No. 1.

Perhaps more striking: Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t even finish as the runner-up — Victor Wembanyama did.

ESPN’s annual NBA Rank, released Thursday, featured the tightest race for the top spot in the exercise’s history. Just three voting points separated Jokic, Wembanyama and Gilgeous-Alexander, with each superstar appearing atop at least one panelist’s individual ballot. But when the seven lists were combined, it was the Nuggets’ 31-year-old center who came out on top for the third consecutive year. Though, it should be noted that the voting this year was different, cut from 100 folks in and around the league to just the seven working for ESPN (Ben Golliver, Vincent Goodwill, Zach Kram, Bobby Marks, Dave McMenamin, André Snellings and Matt “Stats” Williams.)

“All three players deserved the No. 1 slot,” ESPN’s panel wrote, “but it’s Jokic in the first position for the third consecutive year.”

In a Western Conference increasingly centered around by the Thunder and Spurs — the two teams that met in the conference finals last spring — Jokic remains the best player on the planet, according to most. MVP trophies and playoff exits aside, the panel’s guidelines asked voters to rank players based on predicted contributions for the upcoming regular season only. And on that front, no one does more than Jokic.

He averaged a triple-double for the second straight season in 2025-26, joining Russell Westbrook as the only players to accomplish the feat multiple times. He became the first player in NBA history to lead the league in both rebounds and assists per game. He has either won MVP or finished runner-up in each of the last six seasons — a stretch of sustained excellence that not even Gilgeous-Alexander, can match. Simply put, of the three, Jokic is safest bet to play the most and produce the most.

The hierarchy beneath Jokic tells a fascinating story about the league’s shifting power structure. Wembanyama, just 22, earned the No. 2 slot after capturing Defensive Player of the Year honors and leading San Antonio to the NBA Finals in his third season. Gilgeous-Alexander slid to No. 3 despite his historic MVP run. The Thunder lost to Wembanyama’s Spurs in the Western Conference finals, and SGA enters the fall behind Wembanyama in MVP odds.

For Nuggets fans, the rankings carry a bittersweet edge. Jokic is the best player in basketball, and Denver still couldn’t get past the first round last spring. The Timberwolves knocked them out, and Jokic’s 3-point shooting cratered in that series — 7-for-36 from deep, which was the sixth-worst percentage in postseason history among players with at least 35 attempts.

That shooting slump traces back to a bone bruise in Jokic’s left knee suffered Dec. 29. Before the injury, he was shooting 44% from 3, which would have been a career high. After his return in late January, that number plummeted to 32%. In a conference that requires going through elite rim protectors — Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert — Jokic’s ability to stretch the floor is an important part of the Nuggets attack.

The Nuggets lost Peyton Watson, Tim Hardaway Jr. and more this offseason, raising familiar depth concerns around a franchise that has struggled to surround its generational talent with enough supporting firepower since winning the title in 2023. Jokic has chosen to play out his contract so he’s in the final year of his deal and players often perform very well in that situation — not that he’s at risk of losing any money off of his expected max deal. And it seems as though he’ll stay in Denver based on the numerous times he’s verbally committed.

Jokic has been the best player in the world, according to many, every year of this decade. But the gap is closing if not nonexistent now. And when you have a stinker of a playoffs where your team gets knocked out in the first round, it’s surprising so many looked over that but hey, that’s just how great Jokic is.

The belt stays in Denver, for now. Now it’s on the Nuggets to build a team that can give Jokic a chance to chase a second title.

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