DENVER — A full boat of 19,683 at Ball Arena rose to their feet in unison Wednesday night. Eleven seconds remained of what would be a 122-113 Game 2 win for the Denver Nuggets over the Minnesota Timberwolves. Sheepishly, Jamal Murray dapped up his head coach, Michael Malone, on his way back to the Nuggets bench. That wasn’t enough for Malone. He grabbed Murray and bear-hugged him. His teammates on the bench followed one by one, with the kind of love reserved only for special moments.
The Nuggets lead Minnesota 2-0 in a Western Conference first-round series. But this win was different. And not so much the win, but the performance by Murray. On this night, Murray left Game 2 the owner of a 40-point masterpiece of a performance from which he needed only 22 shots from the field to get the 40. The emotion for Murray and his teammates derived from the road traveled for him to get to this moment. With a torn ACL and countless painful nights of rehabilitation of a left knee, he didn’t know when he was going to get right.
A standing ovation from a sellout crowd came because the question was legitimate as to whether Murray could be the same playoff performer he was before the injury. You know, the one that put up multiple 50-point games in the 2020 bubble postseason in leading the Nuggets to a Western Conference finals appearance. It was a night of affirmation that spoke louder than any game in a regular season could.
The Murray that Nuggets fans had gotten to know and love is now officially back.
“It means a lot, man,” Murray said. “It’s a lot of fun being in the zone, and feeling energy that I haven’t felt in a long time. I just wanted to play this game all the way through, play my game. I’m glad that we got the win.”
The road back for Murray has been a difficult one. He’s missed the last two postseasons for the Nuggets, his absence leading to early playoff exits for Denver. He was good this year, in his first full season back, averaging 20 points per game in 65 regular season appearances. But Murray before the injury was one of the better postseason players in the NBA. Could he get back to this level?
Game 2 served to give that answer a resounding yes. Murray made 6-of-10 3-point attempts. Whenever the Nuggets needed a big shot, Murray was there to provide it. He went 13-of-22 from the field and handed out five assists. More importantly, on a night when the Timberwolves trailed by as many as 21 points, then rallied with a 40-point third quarter and actually took the lead, the top-seeded Nuggets needed a savior, and Murray was there to provide one.
“Jamal was a warrior tonight,” Malone said. “It’s almost as if he left a piece of himself out there on the floor tonight. I played him 39 minutes. He was impactful across the board, and it was just great to have him back out there and playing well. We’ll probably have to carry him to the plane tomorrow. We knew that at some point we would see the aggressive Minnesota team. I told my team that we’ve played eight quarters in this series and seven of them have been great quarters. We’ve had one bad quarter, but it was good that we found a way to respond in the fourth quarter.”
Murray’s game Wednesday night is a good harbinger for the Nuggets as a whole.
Denver knows what it will get from Nikola Jokić, its superstar, on a nightly basis. On some nights, Jokić will go to the stratosphere in terms of scoring and overall shotmaking. But, for most nights he’s going to score around 25 points, grab a bunch of rebounds and be one of the elite playmakers in the league.
The Nuggets think they have an NBA title ceiling. And they may be correct. But they won’t be correct if someone doesn’t come along for the ride with Jokić. And that’s where Murray comes in. For his career, he averages 27 points per night in the postseason. Once the playoff curtain goes up, Murray is a whirling dervish of a point guard, one who consistently touches the paint off the dribble, one who consistently makes big shots.
“Nikola is a great player,” Malone said. “But you can’t do it alone. In this business, we need help. We all know and understand what Jamal is capable of as a player. More importantly, this is a team. We win together and we lose together.”
On a night when Timberwolves shooting guard Anthony Edwards put on a show in his own right — 41 points on a mixture of tough shots from the perimeter and explosive drives to the basket — the Nuggets needed someone to match the output Edwards consistently put up in the second half.
More than Murray’s production was his ability to dissect anything the Wolves threw at him defensively and make them pay. Minnesota went to drop coverage with Rudy Gobert as the anchor for much of the night. Murray simply took a dribble handoff from Jokić or ran a pick-and-roll, patiently got into the paint and scored. When the Timberwolves started switching everything on the perimeter, Murray cooked the switch with a variety of moves off the dribble that got him anywhere he wanted on the floor.
Eventually, Murray’s ability to close the game out saw him hunting Minnesota point guard Mike Conley on switches and going at him one-on-one with the most important possessions of the game in the balance.
No matter what the Wolves did defensively, Murray had an answer. Because of that, and because Michael Porter Jr. scored 13 of his 16 points in the fourth quarter, the Nuggets were able to make every play they needed down the stretch. And that led to a win, a 2-0 lead and a commanding advantage in the series.
“I think Jamal is playing better now than he did in the bubble,” Jokic said. “Yes, he scored more points in the bubble, but his command of the game is better. He’s playing at a much higher level and that’s what we need to succeed.”
Related Reading
Kosmider: Nuggets’ defensive work against Karl-Anthony Towns key in 2-0 series lead
(Photo of Jamal Murray and Mike Conley: Isaiah J. Downing / USA Today)
