Nikola Jokic remains the Consensus Best Player Alive ... barely

Good morning. Here's our annual update on the Consensus BPA metric, which has has Shai Gilgeous-Alexander closing the gap but not yet catching Jokic. Let's basketball.

Last summer, I introduced a new metric aiming to measure the Best Player Alive according to objectively subjective and subjectively objective data: award votes. See that post for full details on how the metric, Consensus Best Player Alive (shortened to Consensus BPA), is calculated. The short version is that you use a weighted three-year average of scores based on MVP voting, All-NBA voting and All-Star, conference finals MVP and Finals MVP honors. Rankings are built off of that.

After adding final data from the 2024-25 season, Nikola Jokic remains the Consensus Best Player Alive for the fourth consecutive year ... by one of the smallest margins of his reign. Here's the new top 10.

1. Nikola Jokic (154 points)
2. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (149)
3. Giannis Antetokounmpo (109)
4. Jayson Tatum (90)
5. Luka Doncic (55)
6. Donovan Mitchell (47)
7. Jalen Brunson (42)
8. LeBron James (42)
9. Anthony Edwards (37)
10. Stephen Curry (36)

The last time second place was this close to Jokic? In 2023 when Giannis trailed Jokic by just four points.

Shai leaped from No. 4 in 2024 to No. 2 in 2025, and nearly closed the gap with the MVP and Finals MVP wins. And this gap-closing was primarily about Shai's work: Jokic's 2025 Consensus BPA score fell just four points from 2024 (158). Shai's 2025 score jumped 63 points.

How? A few reasons:

• Consensus BPA is a 3-year weighted average, with the most recent season counting fully, the second-most recent season weighted at 66% and the third-most recent season weighted at 33%. This is the subjective part. Crowning a Best Player Alive can never really be about a single season; otherwise, Joel Embiid would have been the Best Player Alive two years ago, and this whole exercise wouldn't be useful. Five years, however, is too long: Ben Simmons, Russell Westbrook, Rudy Gobert, Dame Lillard and Chris Paul were all on the All-NBA team five years ago. Three years – a little bit of recent history, but skewed toward recency – seems like the best fit.
• As such, Shai's 2024-25 season (awesome) replaced his 2021-22 season in the calculations. SGA had never received a single Consensus BPA point prior to the 2022-23 season. So now only seasons in which Shai has some Consensus BPA points are counting in the overall metric.
• Winning both conference finals and Finals MVP is a big boon, worth 15 points in the end. This is the most subjective piece of Consensus BPA overall. In my mind, postseason success is intrinsic to who we rate as the best. I think the ratings are fair: winning conference finals MVP (as Shai and Pascal Siakam did, and as Luka Doncic and Jaylen Brown did a year ago) is equivalent to being named an All-Star reserve in Consensus BPA points. Being named Finals MVP is equivalent to being named an All-Star starter. Most players earning these postseason honors, of course, are also named to the All-Star team, so it's pure bonus. But it seems a fair add-on even though being in an opportunity to win the postseason awards is heavily dependent on team context and success.
• Jokic of course has both the conference finals MVP and Finals MVP honors in his calculations as well. But those were three years ago, so the bonus is (15 x 0.33), or 4.95 points. And next year, that bonus will fall off entirely.

In fact, Jokic is at real risk of losing the crown next season because Shai's 2022-23 season is currently holding him back a little and will disappear from the metric with another campaign in the books. SGA picked up 28 points in that season (he made first team All-NBA, landed on a few MVP ballots and was an All-Star reserve) while Jokic had a league-best 77 (second team All-NBA, second place in MVP voting, All-Star starter and the postseason awards). Jokic retained about a 16-point gap from that season when incorporating weights into Consensus BPA.

But Shai and Jokic's 2023-24 season – which will be the bottom weight in a year's time – are much closer. Both maxed out All-NBA and All-Star points, neither earned postseason award bonuses and Jokic beat Shai by 14 BPA points in MVP voting. That's a 4.6-point advantage (14 x 0.33) for Jokic for the '23-24 season going into 2026 Consensus BPA calculations. Shai will carry a 14-point advantage from '24-25 (21 x 0.66). Assuming both are All-Star starters and make first team All-NBA (a pretty safe bet at this point, barring injury), Jokic will need to either beat Shai comfortably in MVP voting or take the Nuggets back to the Finals to retain the crown. (I don't see a world in which the Nuggets make or win the Finals and anyone other than Jokic wins the conference finals and Finals MVP awards.)

Depending on your perspective, this could be considered an indictment of Consensus BPA as a metric, that Jokic could lose it amid the historic run he's having. But it's not so much an indictment of the metric in that case as it is of voters, largely the media since that's where most Consensus BPA points come from. Many voters don't consider legacy when voting on awards. Some do. But the votes are made all the same. If you consider them as snapshots of current thinking, and you weight that current thinking compared to thinking from the prior two years, it's a good holistic snapshot of the consensus among NBA award voters.

I happen to agree with the voters, by the way: Shai's achievements in 2024-25 were incredible and worthy of the MVP, and while Jokic remains the best player alive it's getting closer.

Here are the top 3 in Consensus BPA for every year in which it's been calculated. (This summer I'll spend some time putting together data for the 2010s.)

2021:
1. Giannis (144 points)
2. Jokic (109)
3. LeBron (78)

2022:
1. Jokic (139)
2. Giannis (133)
3. Embiid (108)

2023:
1. Jokic (128)
2. Giannis (124)
3. Embiid (118)

2024:
1. Jokic (158)
2. Giannis (108)
3. Luka (101)

2025:
1. Jokic (154)
2. Shai (149)
3. Giannis (109)

Be excellent to each other.