It’s hard to imagine a more devastating injury at a worse time than the torn ACL suffered by Jamal Murray of the Denver Nuggets on Monday night against the Golden State Warriors. Although, if you’re looking for such an example, the Warriors themselves are a team that recently endured such tribulations with Klay Thompson’s own torn ACL in the 2018-19 NBA Finals.
The Nuggets rightly saw themselves as a franchise on the rise until Murray’s catastrophic injury. It changed the whole calculus for their plans both this season and going forward into the 2021-22 season as well.
We’ll take a look at the three biggest takeaways in the aftermath of Murray’s injury as it relates to the future of the Denver Nuggets.
The Denver Nuggets have been devastated by Jamal Murray’s torn ACL. Here’s our first takeaway from the situation: The championship window is closed.
The Nuggets had every reason to believe they were a championship-caliber franchise before this week began. They had made a win-now move to get Aaron Gordon at the NBA trade deadline, and they added him to a core that was already crackling at a high level.
In order for them to be a true contender, even with other contenders like the Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers battling injuries and absences, they needed all hands on deck. Without Murray, who is their second-best player behind Nikola Jokic, that full-strength status is out of the question.
Murray took some time to get rolling at the start of the season, but he got his scoring average up to a career-high 21.2 points per game and shooting splits of .477/.408/.869. It’s a disastrous situation for a team that had such high expectations after an incredible performance in last season’s NBA bubble that saw them reach the Western Conference Finals, and it’s absolutely tragic for Murray himself.