NBA
PREVIEW
vious two seasons (per Cleaning the
Glass), Murray had climbed toward
playmaking respectability. Every-
thing still worked through Jokić—“No
one knows I can dribble,” Murray
laments—though with so many other
creators in and out of the lineup due to
injuries, Murray had become a lifeline
for an offense in need.
“When we were injured, there was a lot of pressure on us,”
Murray says. “I was one of the only ballhandlers out there.
I had to find guys, and my guys like cutting.” Of course,
it’s one thing to cut and another to be seen. Playmaking
literacy comes in layers. The first read is understanding the
intentions of the primary defenders. Next is the rotation a
defense makes, and at what cost. Then comes a grasp of how
defenses recover, and how they might be exploited. “I think
you’ve seen him make the initial pass,” Beckett says. “He has
that. Now we’re trying to get the rest of those reads there.”
The only real education is a practical one. Film study can
show Murray what he should do and drilling can simulate
what a scenario might look like. There’s just no substitute
for the randomness of actual play or the instructive toll of
making mistakes in games that matter.
“When I go home and play with my friends and all that,
you’re thinking about things that other guys aren’t even
looking at,” Murray says. “Where the ball’s supposed to go.
Cuts. Defensive rotations—especially defensive rotations.
Knowing when to switch, who to switch on, how to guard it.
The score. Fouls. Bonus. All the little stuff that can make up
a game. All the little details matter.” It’s as if there were an
entirely different world hidden inside basketball all along,
quietly dictating its outcomes. Murray sees that now, even
if he’s only beginning to understand it. ±That belief is all that a shooter really has. Murray
seems to have an easier time believing he should
make every shot than accepting the fact that he
didn’t. “If he’s missing shots, he just gets mad at
himself,” Nuggets guard Malik Beasley says. “But
that’s what I’m here for, and other teammates—
to remind him that you’re not going to hit every
shot.” Therein lies the paradox of the shooter:
the commitment to an idea everyone knows to
be false, coupled with the frustration of it being
proven so. And yet, a 22-year-old like Murray has
to make rational decisions from deep within this
confidence-distorting headspace, all while manag-
ing the logistics of an offense and the engagement
of his teammates. Sometimes it’s a wonder that
cogent, high-level basketball is possible at all.T
HE OVERWHELMING swell of a playoff
run can bring a young player’s attention to
middle distance: too broad for the granular details
and too narrow for the big picture. Malone helped
his developing point guard to bring it all into focus.
“I look to him for everything,” Murray says. “Look
to him for play calls, who to get touches to. Maybe
not just for the play call, but to see where his brain
is at. See what he’s looking at.”
It was a healthy dynamic for the player Murray
was, if not for the player Malone wants him to be.
“Your next step,” Malone told Murray when they
met after the season, “is going to be to stop looking at me.”
“I want you thinking the game,” Malone said. “I want you
to think of the time, score, situation. We’re in the bonus.
Who’s in foul trouble? Are we in a late clock or a ‘bingo’—
two-for-one—situation? What plays are we thinking about?
Who’s got a matchup? I want it to get to the point where if
I’m yelling something and you feel [something different],
Jamal, you call it. If you’re on the floor and you feel it, I want
you to run your team.”
Their partnership, like any between player and coach,
isn’t without its points of friction. After a blowout loss to
the Warriors last March, Malone voiced his displeasure
with Murray’s play by praising Monté Morris, his backup,
for “actually getting us into an offense, which is a novel
concept for a point guard to do.”
“Run your team,” Malone echoed then in a harsher tone.
“Make a play for somebody else.” Murray has gone out of
his way to ask for this: to be coached hard and to be held
accountable. Months later, in their postseason debrief, Mur-
ray would reiterate his preference to Malone: “If you’ve gotta
yell at me like you did some times this year—if you’ve gotta
do that more to wake me up—then do that.”
The letdown against Golden State was notable in part
because Murray had come such a long way. After ranking in
the bottom third of point guards in assist rate over the pre-
66SPORT S ILLUS TR ATED- OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
JAMIE SCHWABEROWTHEY’RE NO JOKE
Murray and Jokić led
Denver to 54 wins
and the No. 2 seed in
the West, which tied
the franchise’s best
NBA finish.