Last October, basketball analyst EddieBuckets uploaded a video that landed with confidence: Nikola Jokic, he argued, was poised for a 2026 season that would put him in territory shared by only a handful of legends. The Denver Nuggets star, his case ran, was a serious chance to win the MVP, the championship, and the Finals MVP in the same season. Six months and one Western Conference semi-final exit later, the prediction did not pay off. But the analytical framework EddieBuckets used to build it is still useful — both as a snapshot of how Denver looked going in, and as a reminder of where the OKC Thunder pulled ahead.
The headline number EddieBuckets leaned on came from Basketball Reference, which had pegged Jokic as the MVP favourite with 56% odds. That projection alone would have been notable. What made the analyst's case stronger was the historical context he built around Jokic's recent peak.
"Jokic's current 5-year peak ranks among the greatest in NBA history based on advanced statistics," EddieBuckets argued. "His win shares from 2021-2025 rank third all-time behind only Michael Jordan and [LeBron James]." That's a stat that even Jokic's most jaded sceptics struggle to dismiss — it places his sustained MVP-level production alongside players whose individual cases for GOAT have been litigated for decades.
The second pillar of the prediction was roster construction. EddieBuckets argued that the 2026 Nuggets had built around Jokic the most talented supporting cast he had ever played with. The summer-2025 swap of Michael Porter Jr. for Cam Johnson got central billing in his analysis.
"Cam Johnson is a clear upgrade over Michael Porter Jr.," he argued, "because he offers similar shooting with better defense, playmaking, and driving ability while having fewer bad tendencies." In a vacuum, the basketball case for the swap is sound. The numbers around Cam Johnson's shooting, defensive versatility and decision-making have always held up.
What the case ultimately ran into was Oklahoma City. EddieBuckets did not duck this. He acknowledged the existing king of the West in the same breath as his Denver projection.
"OKC had one of the greatest seasons of all time in 2025," he said, "with the best margin of victory plus strength of schedule rating in NBA history. Their combined regular season and postseason [dominance] was historically unique." The Thunder, in his framing, were the immovable object — but Denver, he argued, had the irreplaceable force.
The analyst's diagnosis of the prior year's playoff exit pointed in a different direction. "The primary reason Denver lost their playoff series to OKC was the huge difference in team depth," he said, "despite other factors like injuries and coaching. OKC's superior bench rotation [made the difference]." The 2026 Nuggets, in his read, were supposed to close that depth gap.
They did not. The Thunder, by playoff time, had not just maintained their depth — they had compounded it. While Denver was wrestling with the West's deepest field in a decade, OKC was using its full rotation to brutalise opponents on both ends.
None of that retroactively voids EddieBuckets' framework. The prediction failed; the underlying analytics did not. Jokic remained statistically dominant. Cam Johnson did the job he was acquired to do. The Nuggets, by the metrics that mattered most, were the second-best team in the West for stretches of the regular season. The problem was that the team above them was historic.
And there is a smaller, more endearing moment in the same content cycle worth flagging — because it tells you something about Jokic himself. In an old draft-night clip resurfaced on the back of his MVP case, an interviewer noted that a Taco Bell commercial had been running when Jokic was selected 41st overall in 2014. The interviewer asked the now three-time MVP what he made of that now.
"Do they believe in the fat boy?" Jokic deadpanned in reply.
The answer, by the metrics, is yes. The pre-season prediction was that 2026 would be the year that belief produced a triple-crown. It did not. But the case for Jokic — the player, the talent, the irreplaceable engine of the team that gets built around him — has not weakened. It has only had to wait.
