DENVER — If you want to sit Jamal Murray at David Thompson’s table, the Skywalker’s more than happy to scoot over to make room.
“I think his legend is still growing,” Thompson, arguably the greatest guard in Nuggets history, told me when I’d asked him recently about Murray, the first point guard to lead Denver to an NBA championship. “It’s coming.
“Yeah, it’s coming. And he’s gonna be right there. (When) he’s healthy, he’s as good as anybody.”
Game recognizes game.
Nikola Jokic, basketball king of the world, was already dancing on Mount Olympus when the NBA playoffs started. The last eight weeks simply affirmed the Joker’s immortality, all while stuffing sweaty gym socks into the haters’ stammering pie holes.
But with apologies to Aaron Gordon, Mr. Nugget, Man of the People, nobody’s star on the Nuggets roster has shot faster and brighter since mid-April than the Blue Arrow’s.
Murray didn’t just shoot his way into the convo of best Nuggets guard ever. No. 27 might’ve just put up the best NBA postseason run of any player who’s yet to make an All-Star team — 26.1 points, 7.1 assists, 5.7 boards and 3.0 3-pointers per game for a title-winner that steamrolled to a 16-4 record in the playoffs.
“That should be an affront to him, that people just see him as a scorer,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said of Murray earlier this month. “The challenge has always been for (him) to be an All-Star … (and that) requires you to bring commitment to (it) across the board.”
The Arrow’s done that, several times over. Dude also brings the narrative (Bubble greatness to brutal knee injury to rehab to NBA champ), having hopped from hoops Heaven to Hades, only to punch a round-trip ticket back to the angels again.
Murray is an overdue All-Star, and it took the last two months for the rest of the basketball world to finally catch on. A chucker on a bad team can bomb his way to regular-season stardom. But the playoffs are when stat-padders get weeded out and found out, when the heat — literal and figurative — gets cranked up and the spotlight burns brightest.
The Arrow’s career postseason averages in scoring (25.0 per game), assists (6.3) and 3-point percentage (40.4%) are already better than, say, more celebrated peers such as Kyrie Irving (23.3 ppg, 4.8 apg, 39.3% on treys).
Now that you mention it, Murray’s regular-season numbers, comparatively speaking, don’t stack up too badly with Mr. World B. Flat, either. Murray after his first six NBA seasons sports the same Offensive Rating (points per 100 possessions) Irving did, according to Basketball-Reference.com, after the latter’s initial six years in Cleveland: 112.
From 2011 to 2017, also per Basketball Reference, the difference in Cleveland’s net plus-minus was plus-3.2 points per 100 possessions when Irving was on the court as opposed to off it.
Murray, comparatively, has put up a net plus-5.1 points per 100 possessions over his Nuggets career so far — with a plus-6.2 at age 25 and plus-7.6 at age 23. Kyrie was a net plus-3.2 at age 25 and a negative-0.3 at 23.
“(Jokic) has a sidekick that’s doing special things in Jamal Murray, also, (who) could very well have been the Western Conference (Finals) MVP for the job that he did,” ESPN’s Mark Jackson observed, “(if) he wasn’t playing with, and alongside, an all-time great.”
In hindsight, when it came to Murray’s comeback tour, the Nuggets did him right, and vice versa. Last spring, in the run-up to the ’22 playoffs, the whispers were everywhere. Is he ready? Is it his knee? Or his head? At news conferences, even the straight-shooting Malone appeared to be on the fence at times as to what he was going to say versus what he really wanted to.
Some 14 months later, things worked out almost perfectly, at least on the surface. Sacrificing the spring of 2022 and last year’s postseason was worth it to watch Bubble Murray step into these playoffs direct from Orlando 2020, as if from out of a time machine or through one of Rick Sanchez’s green portals.
“(Murray) always had that fighting inside him,” Jokic noted recently. “He always had that something that kind of — he was, I don’t want to say chasing something, where he’s always (wanting to be) able to be better, be more. He always wanted to be something bigger than he was in that moment.”
Murray’s bigger now than ever, both inside and outside basketball circles. The week of Halloween 2022, per Google data, worldwide search interest for “Kyrie Irving” was 50 times the entries for Murray. The week before Memorial Day, the ratio had flipped to 3-to-1 in favor of Murray. From June 4-10, as the Nuggets pushed past the Heat, the Arrow’s search ratio over Irving grew to 4-to-1.
YouGov.com’s popularity ratings for NBA players over the first quarter of 2023 slotted Murray at No. 33 nationally, with 47% of those surveyed knowing who he was. That sandwiched him between Karl-Anthony Towns and Zach Randolph, just three slots behind the Warriors’ Klay Thompson, two behind Jokic. But it was also up four percentage points over the fourth quarter of ’22 (43%) and 12 points over the third quarter of 2020 (35%).
“I think (Murray) has a little bit more work to do to be up there,” Thompson allowed. “But he’s obviously one of the greatest players ever in Nuggets history already.”
Game recognizes game. Legend recognizes legend. It’s not a leap anymore to put Murray at the same table as Thompson, Chauncey Billups and Fat Lever. Or in the same breath.
