MINNEAPOLIS — Jamal Murray could have been charitable to chicken lovers, like Boban Marjanovic before him.
Maybe for another fan base. But this was a rivalry game.
A number of NBA teams, including the Timberwolves, participate in a Chick-fil-A promotion designed to incentivize home crowds to be loud and distracting when opponents shoot free throws. The prize: free chicken sandwiches if a visiting player goes 0 for 2 in the fourth quarter.
Murray had already punctured the atmosphere inside Target Center by the time he stepped to the foul line late Monday night. But after a rare miss on his first attempt, the volume briefly doubled, Minnesotans sensing a silver lining at the end of a loss. “I realized it,” Murray said afterward, laughing. Marjanovic even crossed his mind briefly — the 7-foot-4 center once played to the crowd and intentionally clanked the second free throw to give Clippers fans what they wanted.
But Minnesota, with or without its unapologetically smug superstar, has been the Nuggets’ kryptonite for more than a year. So Murray decided he had one more silencer in him instead. He calmly knocked down the second free throw, then finger-wagged Wolves fans, Mutombo style.
That was final punctuation on a 43-point performance from Murray, who willed Denver to a 127-114 road win and has averaged 30.3 points per game in the first week of the season. The Nuggets won his minutes by 30 on Monday. They lost the minutes without him by 17.
“I wasn’t forcing it. Everybody played great,” he said. “I just made shots. I just thought everybody was in the right spot and setting good screens. Everybody was into the game, in the second half especially. That makes my job easy.”
This was a game the Nuggets were supposed to win, with cold-blooded scorer and certified Murray disruptor Anthony Edwards out due to a hamstring injury.
His absence didn’t make it any easier, though, because nothing’s ever easy when the Nuggets face their division nemesis. They entered Monday’s matchup having lost six consecutive meaningful games to the Wolves, dating back to Game 6 of the 2024 second-round playoff series and including heartbreakers such as the 20-point Game 7 collapse and the Russell Westbrook double-overtime fiasco last season.
Not to mention preseason and Summer League losses this year.
The Nuggets went into halftime down 65-57 in what seemed to be developing into another bitter head-to-head disappointment.
“It’s been heavily dominated by them,” coach David Adelman said before tip. “We have to take that personally and play better.”
Murray is a master of taking things personally. After leading a balanced Nuggets win with 23 points in their home opener, he acknowledged feeling bothered by the noise about his slow-starter reputation. “That’s why I want to come out and just have a good November, October,” he said. The trend surrounding Denver and Minnesota was similarly effective fuel.
He and Tim Hardaway Jr. traded buckets for an entire quarter, combining for 38 points and engineering a 16-point swing. Denver scored on 20 of 24 possessions in the frame.
“They have great defenders. They have a lot of size. They have a lot of guys that can switch,” Murray said. “They’re strong. They’re competitive. They have a great home crowd. So I think we just kind of used it to bring our own energy in the second half.”
Murray scored 23 in the third quarter alone, riding a 7-for-12 surge that started with a pair of shot clock buzzer-beaters, both of them downright unfair to Minnesota’s defenders: a step-back over Rudy Gobert’s gargantuan wingspan, then a pull-up 3-pointer with Mike Conley’s hand in his face.
“I’ve been on the other side of the basketball playing against him for many years,” Hardaway said. “I know what he’s capable of doing. … You get a lot of open looks (playing off him), I’ll tell you that.”
It was fitting that Murray and Hardaway ignited simultaneously. Back at training camp, Murray made an observation that he found fascinating about the difference between their shooting routines — opposite means to what they hope are similar ends. Whereas the 33-year-old veteran prefers a highly regimented, consistent workout with a heavy diet of catch-and-shoot 3s to get in rhythm, Murray finds what works best for him is to intentionally avoid a natural cadence.
His training sessions can be jagged, unpredictable, and characterized by syncopation. He doesn’t always know where his dribble will take him. Sometimes he’ll bring the ball from one end of the floor to the other between shots, just to fight against the muscle memory of the last attempt.
It’s how he makes the shots seemingly only he can make.
“I’m shooting off the dribble, stepping back, fading way, one-legged (crap) — so I’ve gotta be able to find my rhythm without having to be in rhythm,” Murray elaborated on Monday. “Whereas when (Hardaway) is in rhythm, (crap) like that happens where he’s just knocking down shots, and it’s hard to leave him and stuff like that.
“So I think it’s just part of our roles. I like to try to play my way into the rhythm because you’re not always gonna have it. So if you always just practice shooting in rhythm (off the catch), OK, great. You can make 10 in a row, but what happens when you walk down the court and walk back? You’ve gotta be able to keep that, or find it, or have some sort of a base.”
In a sample size small enough to heed extreme caution, the Nuggets led the Western Conference in offensive rating by almost three points entering Tuesday’s slate. Murray’s blend of assertiveness and steadiness, of style and substance, has been a defining trait behind that start. He’s also averaging five boards and six assists — numbers that have simultaneously impacted winning and stirred early visions of a long-awaited All-Star run.
His coach is unsurprisingly far more concerned with the former.
“How many All-Stars haven’t won championships?” Adelman said. “How many All-Stars don’t have a triple-double in the Finals? … Yeah, he doesn’t go to the glorified pickup game, but the guy is a champion and one of the best players of this generation.”
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