Why Kareem Abdul-Jabbar loves Nikola Jokic: Genius recognizes genius | Mark Kiszla

LOS ANGELES • Kareem gave Joker his flowers.

Winning the MVP is cool, but is it better than winning the praise of the greatest center to ever play basketball?

“Jokic allows the Nuggets to play a totally different offense than I’ve ever seen,” NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told me Thursday, when the Nuggets beat the Lakers 112-105 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in their best-of-seven playoff series.

On a night when Jokic scored 24 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and was one assist shy of his 18th triple double in the playoffs, he again made the case he should already be ranked among the all-time greats in the history of the game, Abdul-Jabbar said: Welcome to the club.

“The Nuggets get Jokic the ball at the top of the key, in a place where he’s equidistant from most of the scoring areas,” said Abdul-Jabbar, applauding the magic that allows Denver to not only run its offense through Jokic, but start everything with the big man.

I caught up with Abdul-Jabbar at the Lakers’ home arena, where he was in attendance to honor longtime teammate Michael Cooper’s election into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

With the ever-attentive eyes that gave him amazing court vision, Abdul-Jabbar sat in a wheelchair as we chatted in the hallway. Now 77 years old, he’s recovering from hip replacement surgery, after taking a tumble at a concert late in 2023.

“I’d like to say I fell while trying to save a child from plunging over the balcony, but I just tripped,” joked Abdul-Jabbar at the time, with a legend that scored 38,387 points in the NBA sticking in a self-deprecating needle. “Hard for me to accept that a once world-class athlete just stumbled. But age is the great equalizer and humbles us all.”

As the centerpiece of the Showtime Lakers in the 1980s, Abdul-Jabbar played with the finesse and creativity of Thelonious Monk in a position that previously had been played with all the subtlety of a big bass drum.

So is it any wonder that he appreciates the artistry of Jokic with the keen eye of a genius that appreciates how revolutionary real innovation can be?

“Jokic can hit outside shots and he’s a good passer,” Abdul-Jabbar said. "So he’s always very dangerous, because he constantly opens up the floor for the rest of the team.”

That’s high praise, because when Abdul-Jabbar talks basketball, it’s the gospel truth.

The kids on Jokic's block back in Sombor did not grow up imitating Abdul-Jabbar, because his highlights were seldom seen in Serbia.

"I couldn't watch him back in the day," Jokic said. "Of course, he's a legend ... He's was a historical player, a guy that's going to be remembered forever."

Nobody asked me, but I’ve long maintained Abdul-Jabbar is the greatest basketball player who ever lived, regardless of position, and with all due respect to Michael Jordan.

While Jordan made us believe a man can fly, back when he was a skinny center for UCLA known as Lou Alcindor, college basketball outlawed the dunk in 1967 in a futile effort to curb his dominance. And what was the big man’s response? The sky hook, which is the most unstoppable weapon the game has ever seen.

At age 39, LeBron James, who scored 26 points in Game 3, spits in the eye of Father Time with defiance. But please remember this: Back in 1984, I was a scrawny cub reporter that watched Abdul-Jabbar dismantle Alex English and the Nuggets in five games to win the Western Conference championship, then go on to be named MVP of the NBA Finals at age 37.

The Nuggets, as nobody in LaLa Land needs to be reminded, have now beaten the Lakers 11 times in a row. After overcoming a 20-point deficit in the second half of Game 2 back home, Denver went on the road and spotted Los Angeles an 8-0 lead before coach Michael Malone could call a timeout with 11 minutes and 10 seconds remaining in the opening quarter.

And it didn’t matter, because the Lakers know Denver is the better team, in large measure because they have no answer for Jokic.

"He's a basketball genius," said Nuggets teammate Aaron Gordon, who marvels at the choreographer that turns a read-and-react Denver offense with few set plays into a beautiful basketball ballet. "He's a genius that happens to play basketball."

Lakers coach Darvin Ham admits Jokic is his team’s recurring nightmare, when he noted earlier in the series: “Taller than everybody. Wingspan. Skill set. It’s like, ‘(Bleep), I don’t know what to do.’”

We all expect Jokic will soon be named most valuable player of the league for the third time in his career.

And even his doubters will soon have to recognize something even more: Shaquille O’Neal and Hakeem Olajuwon need to step aside, because as great as they were, Jokic is even better.

The top three centers in the history of basketball?

In my book, No. 1 is Abdul-Jabbar, No. 2 is Bill Russell and No. 3 is Wilt Chamberlain.

But you read it here first: Joker's biggest rewrite of basketball history is yet to come.