Jamal Murray had to sleep in his living room.
On Jan. 15, 2020, six months before his star turn in the NBA’s Orlando bubble, the Nuggets point guard watched his right ankle swell to the size of a grapefruit as he sat at his locker. He had badly sprained the ankle in a win over the Charlotte Hornets, and in the days to follow, the pain was so severe that Murray couldn’t walk up the stairs inside his Denver home to get to his bedroom.
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“So I just slept downstairs,” he said.
Murray relayed the tale of his forced couch crashing three weeks after the injury. He was sitting in the visiting locker room in Utah, removing tape from the ankle he could barely walk on 20 days earlier. He had just played 42 minutes and scored 31 points to lead Denver, with only seven available players on its roster, to a memorable win over the Jazz — a victory so gutsy that it moved Nuggets coach Michael Malone to tears afterward.
That night, as Murray made one big play after another to quiet a stunned Jazz crowd, he offered the world a window into the competitive pride and passion that would fuel Denver’s magical ride to the Western Conference finals last summer. His is a zest for the game — and to all the fiercely competitive micro battles within it — that has helped fuel a basketball renaissance in Colorado, the Nuggets’ growth as an organization since 2016 directly in line with that of their still-young point guard.
That’s why seeing all that Murray brings to the court reduced to cries of agony inside San Francisco’s Chase Center on Monday night brought the Nuggets to their knees as the 24-year-old clutched his. There was less than a minute left in Denver’s 116-107 loss to the Warriors when Murray went down, seemingly without contact, and pounded the floor in pain. He called off the wheelchair that arrived under the baseline to take him to the locker room, but Murray could put no weight on his left leg as he left the game. The Nuggets were attempting to get imaging on Murray’s knee late Monday, but it was impossible not to fear the worst.
“It didn’t look good,” Nuggets guard Monte Morris said.
“The mood was how you could imagine,” added Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr., who stood just feet away as Murray grabbed his knee under the basket. “We’re just kind of waiting to hear what’s going on. We’re all worried about him, praying for him and just hoping for the best.”
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Murray was returning on Monday from a four-game absence due to right knee soreness. There were times during his 33 minutes on the floor that he seemed to be bending and flexing that knee, particularly after absorbing a hard screen in the second half. But the injury appeared to occur independent of any other ailment, born of an awkward landing as he drove to the basket.
“Some of the coaches, when they watched the replay, said it looked like he hyperextended it,” Malone said. “Again, he just came back. His (right) knee’s been bothering him. He took those four games to try to get right.”
“I just heard him yelling in pain,” Porter said. “I didn’t know what was going on. Just praying for him.”
What the Nuggets will lose if Murray is not returning to the court anytime soon goes beyond the career-best 21.3 points per game he’s averaging this season. It goes past that balletic two-man game he dances with MVP candidate Nikola Jokic. It even extends deeper than his ability to light a match and set the court aflame with scoring blitzes few in the league can match, explosions like the one the world watched last summer.
If Jokic is the engine that makes the Nuggets go, Murray is their soul. His performance in the bubble last year, when he averaged 26.5 points on 51/45/90 shooting splits and twice reached 50 points in the first-round series against the Jazz, was a testament to his considerable shot-making talent and his stubborn refusal to give anything but all of himself to his team in its most trying hour.
How are the Nuggets, whose lofty goals are reflected in how they break huddles — “Championship on 3!” — supposed to walk that path without Murray’s presence? How can they ease the pressure off Jokic without the attention Murray commands? Who will ignite an impossible rally if No. 27 isn’t there to flip the switch as he already has done so many times in his five seasons with the franchise?
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The Nuggets weren’t ready to entertain any of those heavy questions Monday night. The scene was still too raw.
“All our thoughts are with Jamal,” Malone said.
Former Nuggets coach George Karl knows all too well how a magical season can be unraveled by the cruel twist of fate. His 2012-13 Denver team was cruising in the second half of the season on the way to a franchise-record 57 games, at one point winning 15 games in a row. But in the 76th game of the season, Danilo Gallinari, the team’s second-leading scorer, suffered a torn ACL that ended his season. The Nuggets won five of their final six games to end the regular season, but they suffered a first-round upset at the hands of the upstart Warriors.
“Gallo flashback moment from eight years ago tonight,” Karl tweeted shortly after Murray suffered the knee injury.
The Nuggets should know by Tuesday the severity of Murray’s injury. They’ll know then just how long they might have to play on without their emotional leader, whether they will have to vie for a championship — a treacherous task under the best circumstances — without their second-best player.
What the Nuggets already know, even if they weren’t ready to address it Monday, is that there is no easy way to replace all that Murray brings.
Malone summed up the feeling of an entire organization as he wrapped up his postgame Zoom session.
“It’s just an awful feeling,” he said.
(Photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)
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