Jamal Murray’s Shocking Admission: A Red Flag for the Nuggets’ Championship Hopes

Time is not a valuable commodity in the NBA. Players never know how much time they have left in their respective careers, and teams operate with a very limited capacity of time being on their side. The Denver Nuggets likely understand this better than any other organization in the league.

It took years for them to be able to put together a team headlined by Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray that was good enough to not only win the Western Conference but claim their first championship in franchise history.

A 53-win championship season was followed up by a 57-win year during the 2023-24 season that saw Jokic win his third MVP award. This organization’s core group of Jokic, Murray, Aaron Gordon, and Michael Porter Jr. have remained constant through the years, yet time has resulted in massive changes for Denver.

Bruce Brown, Jeff Green, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope were three essential locker room leaders for the Nuggets. All three players have left since the 2023 championship run, resulting in holes on this roster needing to be filled. More importantly, these departures have left the Nuggets vulnerable from a leadership standpoint.

While the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder are off to a fast start in the West, the Nuggets have been very average to kick things off during the 2024-25 season. Denver finds themselves at 9-7 overall and is struggling to mold their identity.

Much of this has to do with Jokic’s recent absence due to the birth of his second child as well as Gordon’s calf injury that has him sidelined indefinitely.

However, after a massive 145-118 home loss to the New York Knicks on Monday night, new problems regarding the team’s mindset and approach have provided a reason to be concerned about the Nuggets’ championship window.

Jamal Murray, Nuggets commitment to winning

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It is impossible to win every single game over the course of an 82-game season. At the same time, the best teams in the league always have the mindset that they can not only beat any other teams but that they will win every game they play. This approach should always remain constant, as Denver has always seemed to push forward with the mindset of “no days off.”

Well, the Nuggets sure looked like a team that took a day off when the Knicks came to town on Monday and dropped 145 points on their heads. This 27-point loss was the worst Malone’s squad has faced all season, and while their shots weren’t falling, this loss simply came down to a lack of effort.

As Murray put it after the loss, the Nuggets wasn’t focused for this game after recently spending time in Los Angeles.

“It’s a long season. Guys have lives outside of basketball. We just beat LA in LA. We’ve got some guys who live in LA, so we stayed in LA. And like I said, I just don’t think the focus was there from everybody, and that’s what happens when you don’t have the focus,” Murray told reporters after Monday’s loss.

“Like I said, it’s not on coach; it’s not on the plays we’re running; it’s not on anybody else but the guys who are out there on the court. It’s a tough one to go back and watch or even accept, but it was expected that that’s the kind of energy the whole team will bring to start the game and continuously not have a response.

“That’s what happens.”

With this viral quote circulating on social media following the Nuggets’ defeat, Murray looked to clear the air and defend his statement, claiming that the entire team stayed in Los Angeles after their 25-point victory over the Lakers. The Nuggets star also went on to clarify that he was not excluding himself from those who didn’t play well against New York on Monday.

To keep things simple, nobody other than Russell Westbrook really played well against the Knicks. Westbrook saw 26 minutes off the bench and registered 27 points on 9-of-16 shooting, including four made threes.

Even Jokic had arguably his worst performance of the season with 20 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists, which would’ve been a spectacular night for any player other than the three-time MVP.

If anyone wasn’t happy after this loss, it was Malone. After the game, the Nuggets head coach was not afraid to voice his opinion with a NSFW rant about if the team would “flush” away this loss.

“Nah, f**k that,” Malone stated in his postgame remarks. “We’re not flushing. You don’t flush when you get embarrassed; you don’t flush when you give up 145 points; you don’t flush when you didn’t play hard, you didn’t play with effort, you didn’t play with physicality. I’m not flushing anything.”

The Nuggets were 2-3 to kick things off this season before moving to 7-3 overall. They are now hovering around a .500 record again at 9-7, which is why there are questions out there challenging the legitimacy of this team’s title aspirations.

Is the Nuggets’ championship window closing?

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It is certainly too premature to say that the Nuggets are sinking in their championship boat. After all, when Jokic plays, this team has won eight of 13 games this season. He is the best player in the world right now and most certainly the frontrunner for his fourth MVP award over the last five seasons.

The main problem Denver faces right now, aside from the inconsistencies that lie outside of their core group, is that it is hard to pinpoint who is holding everyone accountable. Malone can only do so much, which is why it was so important to have veterans like Brown, Green, and Caldwell-Pope through the years be the voice of reason in the locker room.

With a ton of youthful talents like Christian Braun, Peyton Watson, and Julian Strawther stepping into larger roles, Murray and Jokic must take responsibility for the team’s demeanor each and every night. They are not the veterans in this locker room, and in order to once again have a shot at reclaiming their championship glory, the two Nuggets stars will need to pave the way.

Jokic is going to be 30 years old in February. Murray, who has seemed to lose some of his burst as a result of injuries through the years, will be 28 in February. This team is currently hard-capped at the second apron with virtually no path to changing their roster around this season.

The only moves Denver could possibly look to make involve gauging the trade market for Zeke Nnaji, who signed a four-year, $32 million contract extension in 2023, or Michael Porter Jr.

While it is possible that the team could pursue a trade involving Nnaji’s contract, the Nuggets have held zero interest in bringing up Porter’s name in trade discussions dating back to the offseason.

Looking ahead past the 2024-25 season, it is possible to believe that Porter could wind up being the odd man out next to Jokic, Murray, and Gordon, especially after Murray and Gordon just got new extensions.

As the calendar prepares to be flipped to the final month of 2024, the Nuggets find themselves in a position where they are still very much in the mix near the top of the Western Conference standings.

Perhaps this eye-opening loss to the Knicks will be the wake-up call this group needed in order to finally step up and give Jokic the support he’s been looking for this entire season. If they don’t, then Denver’s championship window will begin to creep shut.