![]() ![]() It was a controversial decision at the time for a guard that hadn’t proved himself to be a max-level player, with questions about his playmaking and defense looming. Nevertheless, the Nuggets showed faith in their young point guard by immediately signing him to a five-year, $158 million contract the following offseason instead of waiting a year to let him test unrestricted free agency. ![]() 48/.37/.85 shooting he averaged in the regular season during the Nuggets 14-game run that ended in a seven-game loss to the Portland Trail Blazers in the Western Conference semifinal. In fact, Murray didn’t crack an assist to turnover ratio of at least 2-to-1 until his third season in the league in 2018-19, which was also the first time the Nuggets made the playoffs since 2013.Ī 22-year-old Murray was good but not great in his playoff debut, averaging slightly better than the 18-4-5 on. Murray averaged 20 points per game during his lone season at the University of Kentucky in 2015-16, but he also threw more turnovers than he had assists for coach John Calipari’s team, and fell to the Nuggets at No. However, given Murray’s nontraditional career path to date, it maybe shouldn’t have come as such a surprise that this would be the playoffs that everything fell into place for the young sharpshooter. But it’s not often that someone who is rarely talked about as one of the best players in the league waits until his seventh year before having a playoff run that changes how they are viewed. After all, we have plenty of examples of young players breaking out on the biggest stage, like a 21-year-old Kobe Bryant dropping 28 points for the Lakers in Game 4 of the 2000 NBA Finals after Shaquille O’Neal fouled out. Murray re-wrote the script on his NBA career, which is rare for a 26-year-old to do in the NBA Finals. In Game 3, Murray scored the most points by a Canadian in an NBA Finals game after dropping 34 points. In Game 3, Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray became the first teammates to both record triple-doubles in the same Finals game and the only teammates to each record 30-point triple-doubles in any game. He became the first player with 10+ assists in his first four career Finals games, including a 12 assist, 0 turnover effort in Game 4 that was just the third time a player had done that in the Finals. He became just the fourth player in an NBA Finals series to average 20 points and 10 assists, joining Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and LeBron James. He became just the sixth player in NBA History to average 25-5-5 through a minimum 50 career playoff games, joining Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Jerry West, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Nikola Jokic. Here are a few of Murray’s most impressive stats from the Nuggets championship run: For his second straight playoffs, Murray averaged over six points per game more than he did in the regular season, proving to be a big game player who shows up when the stakes are raised. Over the course of the playoffs, which the Nuggets dominated with a 16-4 record - the best for any team since the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors - Murray averaged 26-6-7 on. Murray proved that he is more than capable of willing the Denver Nuggets to their first NBA Championship in franchise history after beating the Miami Heat in five games and averaging 21-6-10 on. After failing to be named an NBA All-Star during his first seven seasons in the league, Murray showed the world that he is not just a sidekick to two-time MVP Nikola Jokic, but one of the very best point guards in the NBA. And it’s even more rare for that to happen in the NBA Finals.īut for Kitchener, ON., native Jamal Murray, the 2023 NBA Finals were his coming out party. It’s very rare that a player proves that we actually got it all wrong - that the public consensus of them does not match their actual ability and, in this case, may not even come close. ![]() We put athletes in a box from a very young age, assuming we know everything about them - and at the very least how good they are in relation to their peers - after having watched hours upon hours of film, listening to expert podcasts, reading long-form features, and discussing them with our friends. The league has become massively popular, so internationally recognized, and so heavily scrutinized by fans and media alike that every play, every action, and every athlete is seemingly known to the world at large. ![]() It’s not often that an NBA player catches the world off guard. Three years after his memorable playoff run in the NBA Bubble, Jamal Murray was back to his very best as he helped lead the Denver Nuggets to a first NBA Championship. ![]()
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