SALT LAKE CITY — Jamal Murray contorted his face into a demonstrative expression worthy of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
He was dribbling the ball past mid-court. The Nuggets were hunting fast-break points in Utah, and Murray needed to get a message across to Peyton Watson. The young forward was in the far corner, spaced next to Michael Porter Jr. on the right wing.
“I was trying to tell him to cut,” Murray told The Denver Post.
How to communicate this? With his mouth agape, as if in dismay; his eyes practically popping out of his head; his right eyebrow ever so slightly raised. Murray is a man of many memorable countenances. This was an instant Hall of Fame entry.
“I was trying to tell him to go,” he continued, “because Mike was beside him, so (Watson) thought maybe it was going to be a swing, swing (for a corner 3-point attempt). But he was wide open. So I was just trying to tell him to do what he did.”
Watson got the point. Murray launched a 40-foot pass over four Jazz defenders, only one of whom had caught on. Brice Sensabaugh thought he could undercut Watson’s route and intercept or deflect the pass in midair. But the ball floated over his outstretched fingers and into Watson’s, a few inches from the rim.
In their last game of 2024, the Nuggets had a new contender for alley-oop of the year.
“It was a great catch as well,” Murray said. “Almost took it out of his hands.”
Watson flexed at the bench. Murray hopped in place, visibly brimming with joy. The kind of joy that has been unusually absent from the faces of the Denver Nuggets much of this season.
Their 132-121 road win to close out the year was, at minimum, a fleeting reminder of the daring, effervescent and even cocky connectivity that fueled this franchise to a championship in the first half of the decade. The Nuggets would prefer it be more than fleeting, of course. The defining emotion of the season has been Nikola Jokic’s simmering frustration, at times as noticeable on the court as Murray’s excitement was on Monday.
Michael Malone has questioned his players’ effort a handful of times, even calling them out for “messing with the game” after a win over Detroit on Saturday. Losses to New Orleans, Washington and Portland have held them back from the top tier of teams in the West. Mostly, it’s been a defense problem. But even on nights when they’ve casually reached 120 points — 20 of the first 31 games — there’s often been something intangible missing within the process of scoring. Call it enthusiasm, or creativity, or cohesion.
“We’re trying to find our rhythm, and everybody’s bringing up the intensity and realizing what it takes to win,” Murray told The Post. “I think tonight was another example of us playing very unselfish on the offensive end, and getting enough stops to win a game on the road, and I just felt like everyone was super dialed in coming here, especially (for) just a one-day, one-game trip to close out the year. Everybody was on the same page, in terms of the energy we needed to bring and the reason why we’re here.
“… When the ball is moving like that and everybody’s eating, there’s really nothing to complain about. There’s really nothing to overthink. Guys were just out there having fun.”
Even for a team that prides itself on ball-movement offense more than anything else, the win in Utah was a top-percentile passing performance. It was only the 12th game of Malone’s coaching tenure, including playoffs, that Denver registered 35 or more assists and single-digit turnovers. The ratio was 38 to 7.
It was also the first time in the NBA since 1992 that three teammates amassed 10 assists in the same game. Murray, Jokic and Russell Westbrook each displayed passing wizardry. Jokic recorded his fourth career 35-point, 20-rebound triple-double. Aside from Jokic, there have been four other 35-20-10 performances in the NBA since the 1976 merger.
Westbrook became the second player in league history to record a “perfect” triple-double (100% shooting from the field, 100% from the foul line and zero turnovers), joining Domantas Sabonis.
“He came here for one reason, that’s to help us win a championship,” Malone said. “And he hates to lose. And that’s what I also love about him, is that he’s built the right way. I’ll go to war with Russell Westbrook any day.”
Murray played with a swagger reminiscent of his finest playoff moments. His 20 points weren’t quite as efficient as his scoring has been recently, but his passing somehow rivaled Jokic’s. There was the alley-oop to Watson. The fast-break lob to Christian Braun. The behind-the-back dish in transition. The no-look bounce pass to a cutting Braun for a reverse dunk, which elicited another confident reaction from Murray — shaking his head cooly as he got back on defense.
Braun’s 18 transition points were the most anyone has scored in the league this season, another sign that all five Denver starters were doing what they do best.
Before opening tip, Malone had pointed out that a substantial number of the team’s turnovers have simply been passing errors. That can mean a bad delivery or an unprepared receiver. The former speaks to execution. The latter speaks to chemistry. Why haven’t the Nuggets clicked?
Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray (27) reacts to a call by an official, during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Utah Jazz, Monday, Dec. 30, 2024, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Egan)
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“Guys being unselfish. Too unselfish,” Murray said. “We’ve got a lot of guys who like to pass, who like to make the right read. And sometimes that hurts us. Sometimes Jok catches in the middle of the paint, and he’s trying to do something else, and it’s like, ‘Yo, just go up (and score).’ Sometimes I get in there and I get indecisive and then turn it over. And Russ sometimes does the same thing. I think the other nights, when it works and everybody’s on the same page, it looks really good, you know what I’m saying? So I think you’ve gotta go through those mistakes, just to kind of get better. So this was a good step in the right direction.”
Including himself among those prone to becoming “too unselfish” was astute. The Nuggets want Murray shooting at a high volume. When he leans too heavily into facilitating as only dimension of his offensive game, the search for secondary scoring behind Jokic often becomes aimless, and Denver often loses. That Murray was still able to find room for 20 points in a performance so heavy on distributing was encouraging.
There was no such thing as a bad pass in Utah. With a wild gesticulation toward Watson, Murray even disproved the age-old notion that to telegraph a pass is a cardinal sin.
“Well,” he said, “I mean, if the defense ain’t looking.”
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