As any broadcast crew will point out the second he starts cooking, Jamal Murray owns a strange and wondrous NBA distinction: No player increases their scoring average more between the regular season and playoffs than he does. One can interpret that stat a number of ways, including asking the logical question of why someone who is so mission-critical to the Denver Nuggets winning anything serious can barely play himself onto all-star snub lists, but Murray's masterclass performance in Tuesday's Game 5 against the Los Angeles Clippers provided insurmountable evidence that his game is built for the biggest moments.
Murray dropped 43 points on 26 shots, adding three steals, seven assists, and five boards—according to Basketball Reference's holistic game-score stat, his second-best postseason performance ever—and was comfortably the best player on the floor, as James Harden and Nikola Jokic neutralized each other, Kawhi Leonard was Fine, and Ivica Zubac had a good game on his government-mandated supply of six-foot half-hooks and putbacks. Everyone seemed, if not nervous, then exhausted from the mental and physical strain of the series, a conference-final wolf in first-rounder's clothing.
Everyone, that is, but Murray, who looked cocky. He'd navigate around a couple of screens at the top of the key, recognize that Kris Dunn or Derrick Jones Jr. or, if he was lucky, Norm Powell was a half-step away from a full recovery, and just pop the three. If there was space, he would capitalize. The regular-to-postseason scoring increase is the attention-grabbing thing with Murray, but it comes with an only slight increase in his efficiency. Instead, in the postseason he plays like this: zero passivity, total fearlessness, and an almost arrogant insistence that nobody can do a thing to bother him.
The Clippers experimented with and mostly succeeded at a fascinating gambit, designed to keep Jokic from destroying them as he'd done in Game 4: parking Zubac on the baseline to wall off the rim and forcing poor Harden to go beef-on-beef with Jokic. Harden's actually pretty good at the strength-contest variety of defense; while the expenditure probably helps explain the mere 11 points he scored at the other end, Jokic only had 13. The Clippers sent a lot of help when Jokic would start to spin with it or if he looked at all feisty in the two-man game, a response that created tons of space for Murray and his teammates. If you have watched any Clippers playoff runs in the Kawhi Leonard era, you will not be surprised to learn that L.A. looked weirdly checked out for a lot of the game—the exact sort of mentality Murray punishes.
Watching Murray tempts you to abandon schematic or statistical thinking for paeans about competitive mindset, and I don't think that's a mistaken line of thinking to pursue. The best athletes have to have irrational levels of self-belief, and when Murray is spinning up and around a perfect contest for a beautiful jumper or powering past Zubac and sneering, you can see that self-belief infect his teammates. What makes Nikola Jokic special is his touch and vision; what makes Murray special is his will.
I'm especially impressed because Murray was as uneven and hobbled as ever this regular season. He had a couple of great stretches in February and March, but was never consistent or explosive enough to help his team grab a stranglehold on the two-seed they were scrapping for. The signal to watch for with Murray is not his shooting, but his drives. If he has that pop off the bounce and is trying to dunk on guys, he can be trusted (again, doing all that shows a guy operating with self-confidence). He wasn't dunking on people enough, and as recently as this month, it seemed he might not be able to.
Late in the season, Murray missed a bunch of time with a strange hamstring injury, which is the wrong muscle injury at the wrong time for a player who hopes to have an explosive playoff run, and a team that needs him. "This has been a weird one," coach Mike Malone said of the injury on April 6, two days before he was fired. "It was day-to-day, day-to-day. The next thing you know it's not day-to-day." The team said they hoped to have him back for the playoffs. The specter of Jalen Pickett loomed.
But no: Murray is back, and so are the Nuggets. What a joy it is.
