Eddie Johnson: We anointed Nikola Jokic too quickly. He doesn’t sit at the table with the all-time greats yet

Since around 2008, it is downright difficult for me to place tremendously gifted basketball players (like Nikola Jokic) among the greats of the game. Why? Well, I will not delve too deeply into it, but if you know and have followed me over the years, you know that I am not a fan of extreme analytics.

See, basketball used to have a hierarchy of expectations and judgments. I learned a lot from the great Larry Bird, and it wasn’t from him and me having a normal conversation; it was from him and me bantering back and forth competing in a game. Out of all the nasty things we said to each other, there was one thing he said that hit home like a rock. I was in the process of having a very good offensive game against him when I was playing with the Kings. I gave him a head fake and got him off his feet. I must admit I did not care about making the basket. All I cared about was driving the ball through his face, and I did, and the ball went in as well. I remember this like yesterday. I was laughing because in my mind I got the best of him when he said, “All you can do is score.” Although I retorted, “I can make you bleed too,” what he said hit home after I thought about it after the game.

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“Eddie, if you don’t improve other parts of your game, and especially defense, you cannot be compared to some of the great small forwards playing in my era. You will come up short in comparison.”

At least I had a chance to prove it because I was playing against historically some of the greatest small forwards ever, like Dr. J, Bird, Dominique Wilkins, Bernard King, Alex English, Mark Aguirre, Adrian Dantley, James Worthy, Kiki Vandeweghe, and Purvis Short. I never got a night off defensively in the 80s.

Jokic is an amazing basketball player who plays like a traditional old-school center with his own uniqueness. He has the skillset of a point guard, the scoring mindset of a wing player, and he is Bill Walton reincarnated offensively. I am amazed at his ability to seemingly always make the right play. He has a competitive demeanor that equates with the great players of the past, and especially those in the 70’s and 80’s. But respectfully, when he is perceived already to be sitting at the table of the Top 5 centers of all time (Kareem, Russell, Wilt, Shaq and Hakeem), I wonder… Who is he being compared to in his era to justify it, and who is he replacing in the Top 5?

This is an era where judging NBA players has gotten harder, because the game no longer labels them by size or position. On any given night, you’ll see five wings spread around the arc, and little guys switching onto centers like Jokic. That makes it tough to picture how Jokic would have fared against the all-time greats, who validated their greatness by going at each other in the post. Only a handful of centers left in the league still offer that kind of reference point: Joel Embiid, Rudy Gobert, Ivica Zubac and just a few others.

Gobert has been the toughest matchup from a team standpoint and just completed a dominant effort to eliminate Jokic in the first round. Embiid, if not for a chronic injury-laden career, would arguably be viewed as the best all-around center in the league despite Jokic’s statistical dominance.

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If you want to say Jokic is the best center we have ever seen offensively, well, you will get no argument from me. He is a walking triple-double. He taps out at a high number in scoring, passing, and shooting; he does it all with the ball.

But as Bird said to me, what else can you do? That’s the bigger question for individuals who believe Jokic sits at this table. Is his lack of defensive abilities enough for you to say he would remove one of these all-time greats?

Every great on the Top 5 center list was a defensive presence, and if they played in today’s game, they probably would be just as dominant or even more. The problem with today’s society is impatience and a desire to anoint quickly.

A good measuring stick for seeing how prime Jokic would measure came against Gobert, a four-time DPOY who just defended, bothered and beat Jokic in two of their last three playoff appearances.

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So just imagine how he would do against Shaq and Hakeem, who are 4 and 5 on the list with a total of six titles, two MVPs and five Finals MVPs between the two.

I say that Jokic is standing in the room with Moses Malone, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and George Mikan. And if San Antonio would stop messing around and be honest and admit Tim Duncan was a center, Jokic would be behind Tim.

Some people will scream that this is disrespect, but I will remind them what Larry Bird told little old me: “All you can do is score.” And just offense is not enough to sit in the room with the all-time greats.

Eddie Johnson played 17 years in the NBA and is a longtime analyst/color commentator for the Phoenix Suns.

This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: We anointed Nikola Jokic too quickly. He doesn’t sit at the table with the all-time greats yet