There’s no longer any question the NBA is overdue in recognizing Nuggets guard Jamal Murray as an All-Star, and all the proof we needed was for him to sit on his fanny.
With Murray nursing an injured hamstring for nearly a month, the defending champions limped along with a 6-5 record, looking more vulnerable than unstoppable.
With Murray lacing up his blue sneakers Wednesday night for a triumphant return to action, the Nuggets again looked like the most unstoppable offensive force in basketball, rolling to a 134-124 victory against Houston.
Consider it a lesson learned about the fragile nature of building a dynasty.
No basketball player on the planet can do the Joker things that Denver center Nikola Jokic does.
But the Nuggets are not the reigning league champs without Murray, who averaged 26.1 points and 7.1 assists in last season’s playoffs. They would not have rolled to the first victory parade in franchise history, fashioning a sweet 16-4 record along the way, without Murray. And the Nuggets cannot possibly defend that title this season unless Murray plays like one of the top 20 players in the league.
In his first minute back on the court since he suffered a serious tweak to his hamstring on Nov. 4, Murray collected an errant shot by the Rockets, dribbled up the court and proceeded to play a game of catch-us-if-you-can with Jokic at the offensive end.
The Rockets watched this almost mystical connection between Joker and the Blue Arrow with the same awe as the rest of us. Murray and Jokic don’t have to say a word to make the basketball do tricks on an invisible string between them.
After a dance of give-and-take between the two best friends in the whole NBA world, Murray fed Jokic with a perfect entry pass to the post, which Joker immediately flipped to a wide-open Michael Porter Jr. And MPJ promptly drilled a 25-foot jump shot, giving the Nuggets a 3-0 lead, a lead they would never surrender all night long.
“We know Nikola. We know Jamal,” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “In our opinion, the best two-man game in the NBA.”
If we’ve learned anything during the opening 25% of this NBA season, it’s that the Nuggets are more dependent than they were a year ago on Joker and Jamal making beautiful music together.
The two-man magic of Murray and Jokic radically alters the geometry on the floor, freeing up space for teammates, which helps explain how MPJ torched the Rockets with 30 points, while making 11 of 17 shots from the field. With 32 rebounds, 15 assists and 10 rebounds, Jokic again made a triple-double look as effortless as breathing.
Shaking off rust from his jumper, Murray finished with 16 points. But he was obviously bummed, and appeared to be in some discomfort, after rolling his ankle in the first half. “Frustrating,” Murray said.
In Murray’s absence, however, the holes in this Denver roster after the departures of Bruce Brown and Jeff Green to greener money pastures have been exposed as potentially fatal flaws in the pursuit of back-to-back championships. Yes, 33-year-old point guard Reggie Jackson appears to have rolled back the calendar at least five seasons on his skill-set to give an indication he could be a worthy sixth man to the NBA’s best starting lineup.
But the rest of the Nuggets’ current rotation often appears to be an act of blind faith by general manager Calvin Booth. Does Malone possess the patience to develop Christian Braun, Julian Strawther and Peyton Watson, all young enough to play on a U-23 team?
After the kind of defensive lapses that drive Malone nutso against Houston, he wasn’t pleased with the overall performance, but said: “I prefer great outcomes to (crappy) losses.”
There will be consternation, not too mention some L’s, resulting from the mistakes of these youthful players that could test the strength of the relationship between Malone and Booth. It risks becoming an exercise in futility whenever a coach is asked to nurture young players and chase a ring in the same season.
This is a brave experiment by Booth, but a problem that he can ill afford to fiddle with for more than another 20 games, before the Nuggets need to decide how aggressively they must pursue a trade to bolster the magic of Joker and Jamal for another championship push.
