The Denver Nuggets are one Anthony Davis game-winner away from being up 2-1 in the Western Conference Finals. It would be an incredible feat for any team, but this Nuggets team seems to shake off any pressure and rise to the occasion. Nikola Jokic is their engine, but Jamal Murray has been their accelerator.
On the daily Locked On Nuggets Podcast, hosts Matt Moore (HPBasketball) and Adam Mares discussed Jamal Murray’s rise to stardom and how everyone was wrong about him.
Matt Moore: We've seen Jamal Murray go through his warm up 100 times, 200 times, and he goes out and shoots a number of shots from half court. Those shots are like half court Curry shots. He takes a number of them from about 30 feet, around the hash marks, around where he hit the dagger, and every time he shoots those I'm always like, ‘I don't know why Jamal practices these, it’s not like he's ever going to use them in a game.’ And he absolutely drove the dagger into the Los Angeles Lakers in a Game 3 in the Western Conference Finals. Nikola said after the game, ‘Jamal is a superstar. He's worth every penny.'
Adam Mares: That meant a lot to me that he said that.
Matt: He’s proven everyone wrong. He's proven every doubter wrong, including me, including you, everybody. He is an incredible performer and he is better when the lights get brighter, and he is so young. If he stays healthy—knock on wood—he is going to have such a great career for these moments, because you cannot say ‘I don't know if he can come up big when it matters,’ because he keeps doing it, and that's amazing Adam, it really is man.
Adam: I used this phrase in the first round, he’s made of the right stuff, and I mean a couple different things by that. One of them is the mental toughness, but here's the thing, and I think it's most people's philosophy on basketball: Being great and trusting your teammates just seems to be the hardest thing to do, and I think Jamal Murray has such a good balance of that…
He just seems to have grown into this incredible superstar talent without necessarily growing into a superstar ego in the bad way. I think that's part of what has been so cool about the natural growth of the Nuggets, you don't have the one guy who just thinks he's better than everyone else. Everybody kind of seems to be for each other, and that's why it was so great hearing Jokic call Murray a superstar because those two guys appreciate each other as much as anyone does.
Follow Us
Subscribe