Denver Nuggets: Jamal Murray has been an early disappointment

The Denver Nuggets have struggled to start the 2017-18 season despite adding Paul Millsap. A lot of the blame lies with Jamal Murray, who has been disappointing as their starting point guard.

Just before the start of the season, the Denver Nuggets made an interesting decision with their point guard rotation. The team waived Jameer Nelson in favor of Richard Jefferson and gave the starting point guard job to 20-year-old combo guard Jamal Murray.

While this move was clearly made with an eye towards the future, the present-day Nuggets are suffering as a result. Murray, who did not play point guard in college and started just seven games there last season, does not yet seem to be ready to take on the lead guard responsibilities.

Nikola Jokic takes the pressure away from any point guard in Denver’s system, and that will continue with Murray. However, Jamal has been predictably terrible on defense and ice-cold on offense. Even though Murray still has a bright future, his early struggles have been a key factor in the Nuggets’ disappointing start to the season.

Defense: Same disappointment

Jamal Murray was one of the worst guard defenders in the NBA last season for the Denver Nuggets. At 6’4″ Murray is a bit of a defensive tweener — too slow laterally to cover quicker point guards but too small to capably handle bigger wings.

All young players struggle on the defensive end when they enter the NBA, but Murray was exceptionally bad on that end of the floor. When looking at his defense through the prism of the eye test, he struggles to get over screens and gets lost on nearly every switch. Any pump fake from an opponent has a chance of leaving Murray reeling:

The advanced metrics back up the eye test in painting Murray as a bad defender. His Defensive Box Plus-Minus was a miserable -2.1 last season, per Basketball-Reference. His Defensive Rating of 114 was worse than Denver’s overall mark of 112.7–which was 29th in the league.

Ultimately, Murray’s tantalizing offensive potential will be more of an indicator of his success than his poor defense. Unfortunately, his offense has also been well below expectations this year.

Offense: Coming up short

The Denver Nuggets should not have expected good defense from Jamal Murray this season. However, he should have been ready to contribute on offense. His beautiful shooting stroke, solid handle and craftiness near the rim give him plenty of ways to put the ball in the basket.

Unfortunately, his scoring potential has not translated into actual scoring so far this season. Through the first seven games, Murray is shooting 37.1 percent from the floor and an atrocious 18.2 percent from deep.

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Those poor shooting numbers still take his two straight 20+ point games against the New York teams in his last two outings into account. Murray hit two of nine triples against the Knicks Monday night — and improved his percentage for the season.

One could also point to Murray’s low assist totals as a major issue, but those numbers are bound to be low with Jokic running the show. Murray has at least been decent at holding onto the ball thus far, with an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.2.

Murray’s jump shot certainly looks like that of an elite shooter, but his poor shooting from long range is not entirely unexpected. While Murray knocked down 40.8 percent of his triples in college on a healthy number of attempts, he shot 33.4 percent from deep last season on more attempts (344 vs. 277 in college).

Murray should be an elite long range shooter eventually, but his poor start this season and mediocre numbers from last year indicate that his shooting from beyond the arc is still a work in progress.

Future outlook

Although Jamal Murray has been a large factor in the rough start for the Denver Nuggets, there is still plenty of cause for optimism. After all, Murray’s cold start has still been warmer than last season, when he missed his first 17 career shots.

More to the point, Murray is still only 20 years old. He might be starting out of position at point guard. However, his seven starts thus far have already almost surpassed his nine total starts from last season. Jamal’s natural position might be at shooting guard, but Gary Harris‘ incredible growth and new contract make him a good bet to hold down the starting job at the 2.

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Jamal Murray has been predictably bad on defense and surprisingly cold on offense. However, he has plenty of time this season to recover. That recovery certainly seems to be on track after two straight excellent games to mitigate his terrible start. Hopefully, Jamal Murray will also have many more years in Denver to showcase his remarkable scoring talents.