PHOENIX — An hour before Game 6, Jamal Murray’s head drooped. The Nuggets guard took a brief moment to breathe after missing a string of baseline jumpers during his warmup routine. Then he gathered himself, moved to the wing and spotted up for the next shot.
Murray was going through it. He skipped shootaround Thursday in Arizona and stayed in bed until 2 or 3 p.m., he estimated later. He ate his first meal of the day after he got to Footprint Center. He had been feeling ill since Monday, but this was the worst it had gotten. Murray was listed as questionable on the Nuggets’ injury report before the close-out opportunity vs. the Suns.
“This morning was crazy,” Murray said after a series-clinching win.
That he stayed on the court for four quarters Thursday night was a testament to an essential quality Murray and the Nuggets possess.
Whether it’s playing through physical illness or calling fiery timeouts up 23, all championship teams have the ability to convince themselves they’re swimming upstream against something — no matter how dominant or highly regarded the team is.
Denver is only halfway to lifting the final trophy of the 2022-23 NBA season. But for a top-seeded team that hasn’t faced an elimination game or serious injury through two playoff rounds, the Nuggets are still finding ways to challenge themselves. Sometimes the obstacles are natural, like Murray’s illness. Sometimes they’re a bit manufactured.
Like four minutes into the third quarter of Game 6, when Phoenix had marginally narrowed the chasm from 30 points at halftime to 23. Nuggets coach Michael Malone snatched his whiteboard from an assistant as he called a timeout. At halftime, he had told his players, “We haven’t done a (darned) thing. Don’t be that team that gets away from what allowed them to be successful in the first place.” Now Malone thought the Nuggets were being that team.
With the safety of a 23-point lead, it was a touch easier for Malone to play performative as a means to the end of instilling a lesson for the rest of the playoffs.
“Where’s the team I saw in the first half?” Malone recalled saying in that huddle. “Because I don’t see them right now.”
The Nuggets were a few minutes removed from the highest-scoring first half for a road team in NBA playoff history (81).
“I looked at him. I was like, ‘Just calm down. We’re gonna handle it. We got it. We know,’” Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said.
Even if the whole scene was a little ridiculous, though, “that timeout did help,” he conceded. “Just refocusing.”
“I don’t listen to (Malone) during timeouts when he’s mad,” Nikola Jokic said defiantly.
“I’m joking. I think I’m the only guy who’s actually listening.”
That was also a joke.
Denver restored the comfort of a 30-point lead five minutes after the timeout when Murray drained a 3-pointer. He was cooking by then, no longer chained by the morning ailment. He registered 18 of his 26 points in the dominant first half. The guard’s scoring came inefficiently most of this series, but Murray made five of his first seven shot attempts in Game 6.
“Went on the court (before the game), warmed up and I just knew that once I get going, once I start sweating, like anybody does, you start to feel a little better,” he said. “But the morning was very, very rough for sure.”
Still, Murray claimed he always knew he was going to play that night. Even during that crazy morning.
“Yeah,” he said firmly. Then he finally cracked a laugh. “I was just gearing myself up to play.”
Both Malone and Jokic lauded Murray’s mindset and capacity to tough it out. Jokic said his longtime teammate has always been a “dog” and has played through “much worse things” than this. The Nuggets hyped one another up for handling their adversity after a 30-point demolition of the lower-seeded Suns. “I told some of my teammates I hate being disrespected,” Caldwell-Pope said after his 17-point first quarter, referring to the light defensive commitment Phoenix stuck on him.
As much of a championship-caliber statement as the win was, just as important was the Nuggets’ ability to make themselves underdogs to the circumstances. They fed themselves bulletin board material.
Malone pointed out before the series that Phoenix was the betting favorite to win the West. The Nuggets have leaned into the image of the overlooked No. 1 seed.
“There’s one thing we haven’t done,” Malone said. “And until we win a championship, people are going to keep saying that about us.”
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