They became the first duo in NBA history to put up 30-point triple-doubles in a Finals game. Murray and Jokić? They made history together, a crescendo of a night after making years of hoops music together. The Nuggets defeated the Miami Heat 109-94 on Wednesday night, taking Game 3 of the NBA Finals, and taking control of a series that had suddenly gone up for grabs when the Heat stole Game 2 at Ball Arena. This season, they have teammates who play off of them with aplomb. They weave each other into the action in almost perfect symmetry. In a basketball sense, one knows what the other goes through. When they are simultaneously on top of their game, the Denver Nuggets are a deadly basketball team and borderline unstoppable. Theirs is a partnership born of trust and years of familiarity, They are separate and unique talents as players, who are proverbially joined at the hip when on the floor. If I have one thing that I remember (about) him in (his) rookie year, it was that he was always hungry for more.MIAMI - By this point, in a basketball sense, there is very little Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokić don’t know about each other. ![]() "He always wanted to be something bigger than he was in that moment. "He always had that fight inside him," Jokic said. Jokic had a similar chemistry with Gary Harris before Murray became more involved in the Nuggets offense, but he still was able to notice something early on in Murray's time in Denver that gave him a clue that Murray would be a big-time player for years to come. ![]() Coach Jokic did a great job tonight.įor Jokic, there isn't one moment he can pick out early in their respective careers. ![]() "Let me and Jamal play (the) whole side of the floor, and we'll make the right reads. "He said on the bench, let's go to this play," Malone said after Game 3. Jokic made the call to go to it in Game 3 against the Lakers and it arguably won them the game in that monster fourth quarter. It's even gotten to the point when one of them instinctively knows when the team needs to run the offense through the pick-and-roll between the two of them. In the playoffs, the Jokic-Murray combination is once again third in offensive rating among lineups that played at least 250 minutes together. In the regular season, among two-man lineups that played at least 1,500 minutes together, the Jokic-Murray combination was third in the entire league with an offensive rating over 123. "I'd say then we kinda developed a chemistry," Murray said, "Then soon we both started playing off each other more and started figuring out where we liked the ball, when we liked the ball, when I'm going to pass, when he's going to pass, when he's driving, when to relocate, where to relocate, all the details we picked up together over time."Īfter not seeing it for over two calendar years due to Murray's knee injury, people may have forgotten how effective and efficient the Nuggets offense is when they're on the court together, but the stats speak for themselves. It was clear early on that Murray had something special going with Jokic. The two were both coming off the bench together and shared the court a lot. We're just kinda free flowing, playing the game and it has been working."įor Murray, it all goes back to his rookie season in the league - Jokic's second year. It's hard to explain, there's no selfishness when I'm playing the game. "We just read the game and play off each other. "We talk the language on the court when we're playing," Murray said. The two may live very different lives off the court and they may not hang out much away from the arena, but on the court they have the perfect, in-sync relationship. You could make a nearly 20-minute long highlight reel just from plays between the two this postseason. But the Jokic-Murray pick-and-roll is this team's bread and butter and there's a reason coach Michael Malone goes to it any time the team needs a bucket late in games. This team wouldn't be where it is without a lot of key pieces on the team. ![]() Nearly nine years since the first time the two shared the court together, the deadly Jokic-Murray combination has the Nuggets within four games of the first NBA title in franchise history. Jokic's shot barely hit the front of the rim, but if there was ever a play that birthed the now famous two-man game between Jokic and Murray, that was it. Murray draws the attention of both defenders, leaving Jokic wide open at the 3-point line.
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