Denver Nuggets: How Jamal Murray’s play will define postseason hopes

A breakout contributor in the 2019 playoffs, another surge from Jamal Murray can elevate the Denver Nuggets as they head into the postseason.

The 2019 playoffs were somewhat of a breakout for Jamal Murray. Though a proven starting floor general since assuming the full-time role in 2017-18, he hadn’t seen much of the national spotlight in the mile-high until the Denver Nuggets ended a six-year playoff drought with 54 wins and the No. 2 seed.

Once there, Murray produced at a level reserved for the game’s best. Only six other players with at least 10 games of postseason action averaged north of 21 points, 4.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists. Murray’s name was grouped with the likes of the last two MVPs along with Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, helping Denver to within a game of the Western Conference Finals.

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Impressive? Yes, especially for a 22-year-old playoff rookie. What those basic numbers don’t show, however, is a level of variance that came to impact Denver’s chances on a game-to-game basis and what that might tell us about their odds in the forthcoming playoffs.

Murray actually performed better on the road in the 2019 postseason compared to the friendly confines of the Pepsi Center with an added 3.0 points per game and a 2.1 increase in field goal percentage. More surprising was an unexplainable uptick in 3-point efficiency, from 27.9 percent on 5.4 attempts per game at home to 40.0 percent on 6.7 nightly attempts on the road.

For a player with such stark differences in his performance between the two environments, how the bubble’s neutral setting comes into play is anyone’s guess. He might not reach his peak but at least his valley won’t come into play either. A wait-and-see approach is all anyone can do.

Baked into those home/road splits was a level of inconsistency that possessed a strong correlation to the Nuggets’ fortunes.

Of Murray’s 14 playoff outings, he scored above 20 points eight times. In those games, Denver was 6-2, which includes a quadruple-overtime loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. In the six times he failed to reach 20, the Nuggets were 0-6.

It’s no coincidence, then, that the Nuggets missed out on a chance at the Western Conference Finals considering Murray’s 4-of-18 performance in Game 7 against Portland.

In its current form, Denver’s side of the playoff bracket will pit them against the Houston Rockets and LA Clippers in the first two rounds. Despite breaking even with two formidable opponents — 1-1 against LA and 2-2 versus Houston — Murray’s struggles against both, given his playoff impact, raises concerns.

He went for a combined 13.0 points per game on 33.8 percent shooting across those six games. If he has as much power in determining Denver’s playoff fate as the numbers suggest, this production, or lack thereof, makes a first-round exit far more likely than a spot in the conference finals.

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No team in the upper echelon of either conference standings is more perplexing than the Denver Nuggets.

A 43-22 record has them third in the Western Conference, just a game and a half back of the two-seeded Clippers. A top-10 offense and 12th-ranked defense is a recipe for title contention. So is the presence of arguably the league’s premier big man running the show in ways never before seen.

Except, in a game that rewards superstars more than any others, it’s in that department where you’ll find the pessimism that reaches as high as the rocky mountains.

Outside of Nikola Jokic, no other All-Star resides in Denver. None you’d even consider snubs for the most recent All-Star Game. The potential lies in the likes of Michael Porter Jr. and maybe even Bol Bol, but that hardly does a Nuggets team tied for the league’s fifth-best record any good in the present day.

It’s the reason Denver has been linked to stars like Jrue Holiday and Bradley Beal. Stars help teams win at the highest level. It’s that simple.

Until such fantasies can be reignited in the offseason, the Denver Nuggets must place their faith in the hands of their make-or-miss star-in-training to fill the prerequisite void, just as he did a season ago. It worked well as a starting point for a budding core. We’ll see what it results in this postseason in due time.