Gilbert Arenas Shares Utterly Bonkers Take About Denver Nuggets Star Nikola Jokic

Retired NBA player Gilbert Arenas offered a questionable take about Denver Nuggets star and two-time MVP Nikola Jokic.

On Wednesday’s episode of the Nightcap podcast with Shannon Sharpe, Arenas claimed the Serbian center was the “worst MVP winner in the last 40 years.” The discussion began when Sharpe read a quote from an unnamed NBA executive who said Jokic winning a third MVP award was “not going to age well.”

“Their teams were first and second place,” Arenas said of previous MVP winners. “The people who won the MVP, their teams were first and second. When [Michael Jordan] won it, they were seventh in the NBA. That year, he averaged 35 [points], six [assists], five [rebounds], three steals, All-Star MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, scoring title, steals leader. That was an MVP.”

In the NBA, the MVP award has traditionally been given to the best player on the best team. As Arenas pointed out, there are exceptions when players have historic seasons. Despite the fact that Jokic regularly has stat lines that haven’t been seen in decades — and the likelihood that he’ll break the NBA record for most career triple-doubles — Arenas doesn’t think it justifies him receiving the honor.

“What was the historic part of that?” Arenas said in reference to Jokic’s first MVP win in 2021. “There was no historical — ‘Oh, the big almost had a triple-double! Let’s give it to him.’ That’s what the narrative was. A big man almost — not did — almost [averaged] a triple-double and gave it to him when his team record was like that.”

With Arenas, it should be noted that he’s especially critical of European-born players. He praised Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green for smacking Bosnian center Jusuf Nurkic, and claimed on his own podcast that the NBA put rules in place to deliberately soften the game for Europeans who couldn’t handle the physicality.