Why Jamal Murray is 25th best player in NBA | Denver Nuggets | Hoops Tonight

Why Jamal Murray is 25th best player in NBA | Denver Nuggets | Hoops Tonight

What’s up, guys? Thanks as always for supporting the show. It would mean a lot to me if you would take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss any more of our videos. Also, make sure you follow us all over social media so you don’t miss any of our content or show announcements. Number 25, Jamal Murray. A player that was as high as number 16 two years ago after they won the title when he averaged a preposterous statline on the way to hoisting the trophy and then actually dropping out of the list last year after a brutal shooting performance outside of a couple of game winners in his playoff run. Last season in review for Jamal Murray, he played in 67 games, averaged 21 points, four rebounds, and six assists, 1.9 stocks. He He’s one of those guys who falls into that second or that first category of like players that has some athletic limitations, but that he understands defense. We’re going to get into that more later, but he is a good defensive playmaker. His 1.4 steals per game is the same as guys like Amen Thompson and Jimmy Butler. He’s a good defensive playmaker. his efficiency. He was 47% from the field last year, 39% from three, 89% from the line, 54% in effective field goal percentage. That’s field goals weighted for uh weighted for threes, and then 58% in true shooting, which weights his ability to get to the foul line. His play type data, we’re going to get into this. This is uh data for throughout this entire list. This data is from synergy, and it’s specifically about how efficient each player is out of certain types of actions. So pick and rolls for examples, ISOs, postups, attacking closeouts for our big guy, scoring at a roll man touches, things along those lines, right? In pick and roll, Jamal ran 857 pick and rolls last year and he got 1.09 points per possession, including passes. That’s in the 85th percentile. Out of the 23 players to run at least 800 pick and rolls last year, his 1.09 points per possession ranked sixth on that list. Jamal is the quintessential modern NBA pick and roll player because he can make all of the shots and all of the reads out of every conceivable situation that he would run into playing pick and roll with Nicole Joic. So for instance, if you duck under a pick against Jamal in a ball screen or if you die on the pick and you let him get a clean look, he shot over 40% on off the dribble threes last year. You cannot go under or die on the pick against Jamal. If you get over the top, but you’re separated at all because you get caught a little bit on the pick or he just shed you with a move that sets you up for the pick. He can score effectively in the mid-range. He’s 46% on mid-range pull-up twos and he’s just as efficient outside of 17 ft as he is inside of 17 ft. A very good mid-range jump shooter. 43% on floaters. So, he can make the shots in the short to mid-range that you get if you run into the pick. And then he finishes at the rim better than most guards. He was 60% at the rim last year, five attempts per game. That’s really good. And then he’s an underrated playmaker out of action. He’s averaged 6.2 assists per game in the three seasons since his knee injury at roughly a 3 to1 assist to turnover ratio. not an offensive engine like some of the other guys we will discuss on this list, but he can make the reads. But most importantly, this is the separator from Jamal for Jamal from many of the other players, even some guys that are above him on this list. In the event of a switch or a situation that calls for one-on-one, he is still one of the very best one-on-one players in the NBA. He ran 250 ISOs and postups last year, including passes, and generated 265 points out of them. That’s 1.06 point per possession, which is very good for one-on-one play. Specifically with ISOs, his 1.04 04 points per possession, including passes, ranked 13th out of the 52 players to run at least 150 ISOs last year, ahead of big names like Steph Curry, LeBron James, Jason Tatum, Donovan Mitchell. He is remarkably gifted at getting separation with dribble combinations and footwork. He can shoot step backs and side steps and turnaround jump shots over both shoulders. He can get wherever he wants to on the floor, get separation from defenders, and his shotmaking ability is incredible. And so that’s what makes him such an incredible twoman game partner with Nicole Joic. Joic is an excellent screener and he has great rollman gravity, right? Guys gravitate towards him on the roll. So, he gets good separation in ball screens. And in those situations, 40% on pull-up threes, 46% on pull-up twos, 43% on floaters, 60% at the rim. He’s very efficient making any shot that he might need to make coming off of action with Nicole Joic. But then if you switch, he’s going to be able to burn a big man or to post up a small. He’s got the versatility as a one-on-one player to fulfill the other side of the twoman game equation with Nicole Jokic. That is the separator. That’s what makes him so uniquely impactful alongside Nicole Joic relative to his like in a vacuum type of value. He doesn’t really have a weakness on offense. If you leave him wide open, he’s a great catch and shoot player. He’s 41.4% 4% on unguarded cand jump shots last year. He can drive to close out. He finishes extremely well on cuts for a guard. He shoots 71% on cuts because he’s a good rim finisher. In the playoffs, he had his lay uh his like ups and downs. This is worth mentioning with Jamal. But one of the things that’s kind of prevented his up and down shotmaking in terms of postseason consistency, he’s been so good late in games that it undoes most of the damage from that kind of inconsistent shooting. He’s hit in the last three playoff runs 16 clutch shots, including multiple buzzer beaters. He is one of the most dependable lategame shot makers in the NBA, which gives him a ton of post-season utility. Now, he has his downsides. Jamal can be a very frustrating player because of his lows. He’s notorious for coming into training camp out of shape and then playing his way into shape. His seasons tend to take on this repetitive flow where he gets in shape and plays really well in the middle portion of the season, but then his body starts to break down. He’s had to miss a decent chunk of time right before the postseason in each of the last two years. Those injuries end up then disrupting his rhythm and preventing him from getting to that level of consistency. Again, if you look during the title run, he averaged 26.6 rebounds and seven assists on 59% true shooting. He’s shown it before that for four playoff rounds, he can be a reliable scorer. he just hasn’t been able to replicate the necessary conditioning and you know that conditioning is directly related to you being able to sustain certain little bang up injuries that you might get over the course of the year. The stuff with defense with Jamal I’m less concerned with. Again, like we talked about earlier, there are two different kinds of bad defenders. Guys who just straight up don’t understand defense and are constantly in the wrong place. These are mistake makers. they incessantly make mistakes and it makes them impossible to bring or build a good defense around. Then there’s the guys that are limited athletes and because of their offensive focus, they might have a lot of like laziness in the regular season where it’s less about them not understanding where to be, but them just being like, “Ah, it. We’ll try it again on the next possession or we’ll do it at the end of the game when we need to.” Right? There are a lot of guys who fall into that category. Jamal falls into that category. And in that category, these are guys that have high IQ, that do understand defense, do know where to be, do know when to rotate, when not to, how to fulfill a role in a defense. Those guys can scale up their defense when they need to. And it’s absolutely worth mentioning that the Nuggets have been able to scale up their defense to where they need to get in the playoffs, winning the title in 2023. Last year, they did about as good a job guarding Oklahoma City as anybody in that playoff run because of their intelligence, their overall cumulative intelligence on the defensive end of the floor. And Jamal Murray was part of that and he’s a good defensive playmaker. But the conditioning stuff is real and it obviously comes with inconsistency that has hurt his team at times over the years. That’s what prevents Jamal from reaching his potential. Again, I’ve had him as high as number 16 on this list two summers ago after they won the title. He is capable of getting back to that level if he can work on those conditioning details and maximize his talent over the course of an entire season. For all the talk about, you know, Nicole Joic never playing with an all-star, an AllNBA player, we all know that Jamal Murray can get to that level. Maybe not all NBA, but he certainly can get to that all-star level as one of the top, you know, 16 to 25 players in the NBA. He just has to maximize through his conditioning to start seasons. But even in his current state as a basketball player, he’s one of the most valuable players in the league be, especially in his very specific role alongside Nicole Joic, which is his ability to score and playmake out of every conceivable situation, including switches. It’s truly unique. There’s not a lot of guards, including the next guy we’re going to discuss on this list, that have that level of versatility, and it’s what allows Jamal to come in at number 25 on this year’s list.

Jason breaks down the strengths and weaknesses of Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, why he’s the 25th best player in the NBA, and why he’s not higher on the list. How will he and Nikola Jokic fare in the Western Conference this coming season?

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