The best workout Rowan Barrett ever witnessed happened about 13 years ago at Falstaff Community Centre in Toronto.
That’s when Roger Murray drove his 15-year-old son, Jamal Murray, from Kitchener, Ont., for a pickup run in front of scouts.
As Barrett, Canada Basketball’s men’s general manager, tells it, the shot-making that the younger Murray has now become known for with the Denver Nuggets already existed.
But Barrett also watched as the kid from Kitchener took charges, blocked shots, flew to the rim for putback dunks and guarded opponents over the length of the court.
“He was competing at every single thing that you could compete at in the game,” Barrett said. “It wasn’t about his body, wasn’t about his size. It was the size of his heart that was coming through in a big way.
“Normally you need to watch a player a few times when you’re evaluating. Not with him. I called the coach immediately leaving the gym. I said, ‘I just found a kid that’s going to start on our team.’”
Now, Murray’s competitiveness and heart will face their latest test as he attempts to rebound from a poor performance at the Paris Olympics on the NBA Playoffs stage. The Nuggets open their first-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday.
In Paris, Barrett proved prophetic. Murray was set to start for Canada next to fellow NBA all-star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the national men’s team made its return to the Games after 24 years. A medal seemed more probable than not.
Instead, Canada fell to host France in the quarterfinals, undone by the likes of Guerschon Yabusele, Isaiah Cordinier and Matthias Lessort. Murray, now coming off the bench, managed just seven points on 3-of-13 shooting in 24 minutes.
It was the second-highest scoring output of Murray’s four games, behind an eight-point effort in Canada’s opener. For the tournament, he finished 14.3 per cent from three-point range and minus-23.
Perhaps for the first time in his professional career, Murray faced adversity and did not come out on top.
“He’s a fighter by nature,” Barrett said. “I think one of the areas that really separates Jamal is his mental capacity … and his calm in the moment. It’s bedlam and the stadium’s going nuts and he’s just walking calmly, like this is a stroll in the park. He’s walking around like it’s the first quarter.”
But that calmness did not materialize into success in Paris, nor in the preceding NBA playoffs.
Murray entered the Olympics after an injury-plagued NBA season, including a calf strain in the playoffs. In the post-season, a player who had become synonymous with clutch — Murray once posted a 34-10-10 triple-double in the NBA Finals, and his performance in the 2020 bubble was the stuff of legend — could not quite find that extra gear.
Against the Los Angeles Lakers in Round 1, he took more than 20 shots in all five games but made more than nine just once. In Round 2, facing the Minnesota Timberwolves, Murray eclipsed 20 points just twice in seven games. He posted separate 3-of-18 and 4-of-18 shooting performances as his Nuggets, the reigning champions, were eliminated.
Not long after, he arrived late to Team Canada training camp and was limited in all of Canada’s exhibition games — curious, especially for someone who had not played for the senior team since 2015.
After the Games, Nuggets president Stan Kroenke confirmed that Murray “was not 100 per cent.”
“But he threw caution to the wind and said, ‘No, I want to do this for my country,’” Barrett said. “I would say there was just some ups and downs there and just trying to make sure we can acclimate him.”
“You’re trying to put all these things together and trying to win at the same time. And ultimately, obviously, we didn’t meet our goal. And so I just think all of us, it still stings when you think about it.”
Despite his recent trials, Kroenke rewarded Murray in September with a four-year, $209-million maximum contract extension. For a salary cap-restricted team tasked with making the most of three-time MVP Nikola Jokic’s peak, the contract meant additional pressure on Murray.
Things began inauspiciously, and murmurs of overpaid ensued.
In November, he averaged just 17.8 points per game while shooting just 31 per cent from three-point range, 43 per cent from the field and an uncharacteristic 72.2 per cent from the line. The Nuggets, supposed title contenders, sat on a middling 10-7 record.
It’s hard to say the Nuggets are in a much better position now, entering the playoffs. They’re the third seed, but they also fired GM Calvin Booth and head coach Mike Malone with less than two weeks left in the regular season.
Murray himself recently returned from a six-game absence due to a hamstring injury. But zoom out, and the Canadian appears to have righted himself: his 21.4 points per game are a career high, as are his 1.4 steals. His shooting percentages all rebounded to around his career averages.
In February, he went off for 55 points against the Portland Trail Blazers — a Canadian single-game record, eclipsing the mark of 54 points Gilgeous-Alexander had set less than a month earlier.
“It’s just all competitive spirit. I came ready to play,” said Murray, who was ejected against the Blazers two nights earlier.
Added Nuggets forward Zeke Nnaji: “When he’s mad, there’s no one in the world that can stop him.”
Murray’s held that same attitude since he made the unlikely and ground-breaking choice to forgo U.S. prep school and play high-school basketball at home at Orangeville Prep.
“I never doubt Jamal. I’ve (seen) too much of him to ever doubt him,” said Orangeville prep co-founder and CEO Jesse Tipping. “But I know that he’s motivated by competition, right? And he wants to play in games that matter, and he wants to win, and he wants to do it at any cost.”
It’s unlikely that Murray paid much attention to the Canadians who doubted him in the summer, or the Nuggets fans who may have questioned his contract in the fall, Tipping said.
“He gives two craps what other people think of him. He’s motivated by himself, by his family, by the goals that he sets for himself. So if people are saying things about contract or playing, I don’t think it bothers him. I mean, he’s constantly trying to be the best player in the world, no matter what,” Tipping said.
The Western Conference offers a minefield of a playoff bracket. The fourth-seeded Nuggets will first face Kawhi Leonard’s Clippers, then potentially meet Gilgeous-Alexander and the league-best Oklahoma City Thunder in Round 2.
But those who know Murray best are adamant he will find a way through.
“If you stack up the successes and then the perceived opportunities that he has not had success, the former list is much, much, much, much longer than the latter list,” said Larry Blunt, an assistant at Orangeville.
“If I had to put a wager on his success, I would unequivocally put everything I own that he’ll be successful. That’s a quote that I would like to have.”
Murray’s chance for redemption with Team Canada won’t come as quickly — the next major tournament isn’t until 2027 World Cup in Qatar.
If the fiery Murray described by Barrett, Tipping and Blunt shows up there, Canada may just be in line for a medal.
“What I’ve seen with him is whatever duress that he might have been under at any point in his basketball life,” Barrett said, “he usually comes out and answers those questions with his play on the court.”
