Why Nuggets’ Jamal Murray is “built for” the NBA playoff stage

Like sun-soaked days over Wash Park or tulips bursting at the Botanic Gardens, even Jamal Murray has a few tells about what time of year it is.

In the first-round playoff series against Minnesota, Murray burnished his reputation as a playoff assassin. In just his second postseason game since September 2020, Murray eviscerated the Wolves for 40 points. Less than a week later, he hung 35 more to send them into the offseason.

And yet the signals Nuggets coach Michael Malone derives from his lead guard, suggesting a playoff focus has consumed him, have nothing to do with scoring points.

“Defense is a big one, how locked in is he? How engaged is he?” Malone told The Denver Post. “The other one is his rebounding. At his size and strength, if he played like this all year long, he’d be a perennial All-Star.”

Malone spotted another tell when his burly guard insisted on guarding Anthony Edwards, Minnesota’s top scoring threat, in the first round.

“’No, you’re not hiding me,” Malone said of Murray’s eagerness. “Let me guard the best player.’”

That’s when Malone knows something’s been triggered in Murray, who was dormant for the last two playoff runs while rehabilitating a torn ACL. As Malone and Murray approach their 40th playoff game together, the veteran coach said he has a threshold he’s challenged his point guard to reach: 20-plus points, six rebounds and six assists per game, every game.

The bar’s not unrealistic.

Murray’s career playoff averages — 24.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 5.9 assists — are close. In the first round against Minnesota, his pace was even closer at 27.2 points, 5.6 rebounds and 6.4 assists.

When Murray is engaged in a playoff series, according to one rival executive, he can become the focal point of a team’s defensive scheme.

“You don’t know how to guard him because he’s now incorporating more of a post-up game into his attack, he sees transition pull-up threes, he’s attacking the rim,” the executive said.

Ahead of Game 1 of their Western Conference semifinal series against Phoenix on Saturday, Aaron Gordon’s logged just five playoff games with Murray since joining the Nuggets in 2021. His impression of who Murray is during the “second season” is already cemented.

“Night in and night out, he thinks he’s the best player on the floor and a lot of the nights, he is,” Gordon said.

Nuggets assistant coach David Adelman said he expected this. Citing his bubble run in 2020, Adelman said the way Murray manipulated Royce O’Neale and Donovan Mitchell on the Jazz, then Paul George and Patrick Beverly on the Clippers, and then current teammate Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on the Lakers, suggested he was hard-wired for the postseason.

“(The postseason) is a slower game,” Adelman said. “It’s more game-plan based. He thrives in those situations. No different than seeing what Jimmy Butler’s doing right now in Miami. Certain guys are built for it.”

Murray admitted Butler’s stunning performance against the Bucks inspired him.

“You know when you watch something, you get goosebumps or your heart skips a beat?” Murray said.

The comparisons between the two emotional heartbeats of their teams weren’t unfounded, especially because part of Adelman’s job involves scouting opponents’ offenses. It’s his responsibility to spot De’Aaron Fox’s tendencies or identify weaknesses in Ja Morant’s blistering game. Adelman said Murray compares favorably to the guards in his generational bracket, which includes Fox, Mitchell, Morant, and Devin Booker. Whereas those four are tasked with spearheading their respective offenses, Murray blends with a generational distributor in Nikola Jokic.

There’s a delicate balance Murray has to strike between letting Jokic dismantle defenses and asserting himself offensively, but coaches insist Murray’s impact is felt all over the court.

“He’s our best screener,” Adelman said. “He does so many things outside of scoring. That’s what makes him so unique is when you get into the playoffs and a lot of the cute stuff that you do in the regular season doesn’t work anymore, and you need a guy that can go get a bucket, and I put him up there … with any of those guys in his age group.”

Murray’s not the same caliber of athlete as Edwards or Morant. He doesn’t have Fox’s speed or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s length. What makes Murray special in the postseason is his shot-making, under duress.

When Murray was asked earlier this week whether he lived for the playoff stage, the fiery 26-year-old snapped back.

“Absolutely,” he said, dumbfounded at the premise. “What?”

Murray’s 40-point performance in Game 2 against the T-Wolves was his fifth playoff game of at least 40 points, giving him the most in Nuggets franchise history. In Murray’s regular-season career, he’s only got four such games.

“It’s just some guys have it, and some guys don’t, I really mean that,” Adelman said. “A lot of guys are really talented, can go get 30 in the regular season and it’s fun to watch and they shoot a lot of free throws, blah, blah, blah. You get into a real moment in the playoffs, it’s got to be a special kind of player with a really special mentality and he happens to be both.”

Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth has a different theory about what makes Murray special in the postseason. In his first season directing the Nuggets, Booth said he’s actively given the player’s space, entrusting the team’s coaching staff to work with Murray daily. According to Booth and everything that emanates from the Nuggets’ second-floor practice gym, Murray has become dedicated to his craft. That includes adhering to ACL recovery routines, monitoring his body so as not to overextend himself, working diligently in the weight room and studying game film.

“He’s really started to get into the professional aspect of being a superstar, which I think will hold over a lot longer than just in the playoffs,” Booth told The Post. “I don’t anticipate this always being two different versions.”

Booth said he saw Murray’s talent and work ethic galvanizing before his ACL tear, but that devastating detour carried baggage, both emotionally and physically, that took time to unpack. There was consistency in his approach this season before lingering knee soreness forced him to miss six games before the All-Star break. Since then, though, Murray hasn’t missed consecutive games in two months.

Booth has never doubted Murray’s ability to tap into a space that only a handful of NBA players will ever see. As he continues to mature and move beyond the two-year playoff hiatus, Booth expects those peaks to soften.

“I think he’ll always have the ability to rise to the occasion like all great players do, but I think more than anything, it’s creating that foundation. He’s taken it seriously because he wants to be great. He wants to be one of the best that’s ever played the game.”

The man for the moment

In terms of efficiency and production, Nuggets guard Jamal Murray reaches new heights in the playoffs. A look at his per-game averages between the regular season and playoffs:

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