Keeler: Nuggets gambled on Jamal Murray and lost. Now it’s wasting Nikola Jokic’s MVP peak.
Nuggets need Jamal Murray. Badly. But Denver can't count on him anymore.
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A dynasty dies nastier by the day. Has an NBA team ever wasted greatness the way the Nuggets are wasting Nikola Jokic right now?
The best player in the world is playing the best basketball of his career for a roster that doesn’t play defense, doesn’t listen to its coach and doesn’t have the depth to weather the storm.
This month, in games that matter for NBA playoff seeding, the Joker’s averaged 45 points, 12.3 rebounds and 10.7 assists over three tilts. Denver is 0-3. The better he looks, the more it hurts.
His Nuggets, meanwhile, look like a first-round exit just waiting to happen. Funny, isn’t it? Steph Curry never won a title without Klay Thompson. Michael Jordan never won a ring without Scottie Pippen. The Joker won’t win a second without a healthy Jamal Murray.
Over the last four NBA decades, legends that landed a second parade, by and large, had excellent and reliable sidekicks helping carry the weight.
At his apex, Murray is as excellent as they come.
Reliable? Not so much.
The Blue Arrow just isn’t that guy. Oh, he can be that guy, and that’s what drives you — and hopefully, him — a little nuts.
When he’s right, Murray is a video-game glitch come to life, a jump shot that’s seemingly always on fire. His postseason work in 2020 and 2023 was so exquisite, it could hang from the Louvre.
But he also missed the 2021 and ’22 postseasons entirely to a torn ACL and subsequent recovery. He limped through the 2024 playoffs. And who knows what happens at the end of this month?
It’s time to keep your blue-and-gold rosary beads in one hand and a bottle of Pepto Bismol within reach of the other. Head coach Michael Malone told reporters before Sunday’s game vs. Indiana that he hoped to have Murray back to begin the playoffs. His teammates then honored the Blue Arrow’s absence by dropping a fourth straight game.
What was it John Elway liked to say about Garett Bolles?
Availability’s an ability, too.
Let’s be clear: The Nuggets don’t win a championship two years ago without Murray dropping daggers for fun.
But let’s also be real: The Nuggets also may not win another championship with Jokic, in part, because of the franchise’s loyalty to No. 27.
The Nuggets could use an enema. Everything that isn’t Joker or Aaron Gordon has gotta go. But Murray’s four-year, $208.5-million extension through 2029 makes his contract about as easy to move as a baby grand up 12 flights of stairs.
Hindsight isn’t just 20/20, of course — it’s 5-10, which is Denver’s postseason record since 2019 without Murray in the lineup. They need him. Badly.
They just can’t count on him to be healthy. Not anymore.
Nor is it all his fault. It took several hands to sully a championship roster, some of them long gone. Tim Connelly’s max contract for Michael Porter Jr. seemed premature then and looks borderline painful now. When you ride The Russell Westbrook Express, those tickets are non-refundable. Is it Murray’s fault that the Nuggets rotate on the defensive end with all the speed of an old battleship? That the bench is invisible?
This league is a grind — mileage catches up with everybody, eventually. But it’s also worth noting that Pippen appeared in at least 72 regular-season games in each of his first 10 NBA seasons. Point of comparison: Murray’s done that just three times, all before the age of 22. Since the 2019-20 season, the Ontario native’s averaged 49 regular-season appearances.
When it comes to the Arrow’s health, it’s not a bug anymore. It’s a feature.
Stan Kroenke splashed the cash. Josh Kroenke rolled the dice. They lost.
Jokic’s losing, too. And that’s the part that kills you.
He’s 30. The front office needs to surround the Joker ASAP with more shooters he can feed; more perimeter defenders who can stop or slow traffic before it gets to him; and at least one rim protector. Not in two years. Not whenever Julian Strawther or Peyton Watson turn another corner. Right now.
Instead, Jokic is a savior and a prisoner. An icon trying to shield a dysfunctional franchise from the claws of its collective demons. An MVP looking for help that may never come.
When the Nuggets signed Murray to that extension last fall, it looked like a bargain. Flash forward seven months, you start to wonder if that bargain was actually with Mephistopheles. And if the bill’s about to come due.
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