When the Denver Nuggets decided this summer to give Jamal Murray a four-year, $208 million contract extension — the most money they could have paid him, over the maximum number of years, coming off the rockiest stretch of his eight-year career — plenty of people wondered why.
This is why:
It’s not just that Murray can go full Human Torch and turn in a performance like he did in Wednesday’s 132-121 win over the Trail Blazers: 55 points, a career high (and a new all-time record for points scored by a Canadian, topping Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s 54-point outburst last month), on 20-for-36 shooting. It’s also how, and what that means for the complexion of a Nuggets team that’s been good enough to contend for championships in every season Murray and Nikola Jokić have entered the postseason healthy.
Murray can cook in the two-man game, where he and Jokić have formed the NBA’s most picturesque and prolific partnership for nearly a decade, whether he’s on the ball to start or rocketing up from the corner to take the ball from his big man on a dribble handoff. Go under Jokić, or just be a split-second late in getting up to the level on your contest, and Murray will rise and fire; he’s one of 34 players this season to make at least 50 pull-up 3-pointers, with his shooting percentage on those tries nestled between perennial All-Stars Damian Lillard and Kyrie Irving.
Press up and he can gain a step, maintain the edge by keeping the defender on his back as he surveys the space between the arc and the rim, and work his way into the sort of midrange look that he takes and makes more often than just about anyone in the NBA. Bottle him up, and he can use the pristine footwork he started honing decades ago back in Kitchener to pivot his way into cracking open a crevice, then use his touch to finish in among the tall trees.
And if you do manage to cover all your bases, taking away his initial reads and crowding his airspace … well, Murray will more than happily get off the ball and make himself a threat without it. (He, like Jokić, has developed a crackling chemistry with newcomer Russell Westbrook, getting more comfortable attacking off the ball to the tune of knocking down 39.7% of his catch-and-shoot triples, already finishing more plays off off-ball cuts than he has in either of the last two seasons and scoring more points per play coming off off-ball screens than he has since 2018.) Or, y’know, Jokić will just re-screen and force you to deal with all of it all over again.
The beauty of Jokić is he has so many ways to make a defense wrong. Making the most out of that, though, requires a partner both capable of punishing all the openings the big fella can create — especially inside the arc, where Denver does most of its damage — and confident enough to continue hammering away at them until the opponent has no answer. Murray, at his best, is precisely that type of partner; only 51 players in the history of the NBA have ever scored as much and as efficiently as he did on Wednesday.
That’s the kind of flame Murray can throw. It’s a kind that Denver hadn’t seen much during a brutal nine-month stretch for Murray — one encompassing a disappointing playoff run, a dismal turn for Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics and a sluggish start to the season that had some worried the player the Nuggets had banked their future on might be disappearing.
“Our season is two seasons,” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone told reporters after Wednesday’s win. “Before Dec. 8 and after Dec. 8. … Since Dec. 8, just look at Jamal Murray’s stats. And you guys can write about it, because the stats are amazing since then.”
Malone is exactly right. Through Dec. 8, Murray was averaging 17.8 points per game on 42/33/80 shooting splits; the Nuggets, despite Jokić’s heroics, were just 12-10, outscoring opponents by 2.7 points per 100 possessions. Since that date, though, Murray’s averaging 22.8 points on 50/40/92 shooting splits, to go with 6 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game; Denver has gone 24-9, and its net rating has more than tripled, to +8.3.
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What Murray’s put up in his last 31 games is a tick better than his numbers in 2020-21, when the Nuggets looked like bona fide title contenders between the trade for Aaron Gordon and Murray tearing his left ACL. It’s in line with what he mustered in the second half of the 2022-23 season, when the Nuggets clicked into gear and did go on to win the NBA championship. And it’s on pace with what he was producing last season before the ankle sprain that seemingly precipitated him being down bad all spring and summer — an injury that led a team source to tell ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne earlier this season that Murray “was basically on one leg” by the time the Timberwolves knocked the Nuggets out in a seven-game slugfest in the second round of the 2024 NBA playoffs.
It took Murray a few weeks this season to get his legs back under him, but he’s recovered both his burst off the starting line and his confidence in deploying it. His field-goal percentage on drives to the rim has spiked by more than 10 points over earlier in the season. He’s taking and making pull-up jumpers at significantly higher clips. He’s getting out in transition, and finishing more effectively on those runouts, than he has in years.
And as Murray has soared, so too have the Nuggets, who have a blistering 130.3 offensive rating outside of garbage time with Jokić and Murray on the floor this season, according to Cleaning the Glass. (For reference, the Cleveland Cavaliers — whose offense is not only the NBA’s best this season, but has thus far been one of the best of the last half-century — are at 123.9.) Denver is outscoring opponents by 11.3 points per 100 possessions in Jokić-Murray minutes, according to PBP Stats — almost exactly the same amount by which Denver had stomped opponents out in their minutes over the previous five seasons.
Since the pivotal early December date that Malone referenced, the Nuggets own the West’s second-best record and net rating in that span. Catching Oklahoma City would take a miracle, but with Memphis falling to the Clippers on Wednesday, the Nuggets now sit just a half-game out of second place in the West, with the conference’s fourth-friendliest remaining slate, according to Positive Residual (whose schedule analysis accounts for home/road splits, rest advantages and the altitude at which the game is played).
Denver will have to fend off the Grizzlies, Rockets and (potentially) Lakers for pole position beneath the Thunder, but it’s there for the taking; Mike Beuoy’s seeding projections at Inpredictable give the Nuggets a 42% shot of taking the No. 2 spot. Finish second, and you get a play-in team first. You get home-court advantage in every matchup except Oklahoma City. You give this iteration of the roster a chance — one that, with nearly $200 million in guaranteed salary already on the books for next season, may well be its last.
“If we don’t win it this year,” forward Michael Porter Jr. told Shelburne back in October, “we all know they might have to break it up.”
The best way to avoid that breakup: breaking down anyone and everyone that stands in your way. Whether the Nuggets can do that remains to be seen. With Murray playing at this level, though? They’ve got one hell of a puncher’s chance.
