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With history of ‘clutch’ moments, Canada’s Murray well prepared for NBA Finals

By Sumaiya | Published 01/06/2023 | No Comments

Mike George first saw it in a sauna-like summer gym at the Jane and Finch Classic, when a then largely unknown Jamal Murray was just 15 years old. 

The point guard with the all-around game and the 519 area code was making his 416 debut. It was not a gentle introduction. 

Murray had just joined George’s prestigious CIA Bounce program, only after acquiring recommendations and a tryout to find his way onto the GTA-centric powerhouse. 

No promises were made or guarantees given. At the time, Bounce was a swelling pipeline gushing NBA-calibre talent. Murray looked like he could play, but everyone at Bounce did. 

But then he took the floor in his first tournament, and flashed something that quickly became Murray’s trademark as he worked his way up the basketball ladder, playing on the AAU circuit, internationally for Canada, recruiting showcases, for the University of Kentucky and now arriving at the highest run Thursday when he’ll help lead the Denver Nuggets into their first-ever NBA Finals as they host Game 1 at Ball Arena against the visiting Miami Heat. 

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Even as an anonymous kid playing in a packed gym in a tough part of a big city where grown men in bleachers thought nothing of telling skinny teenage a few feet away on the floor what was wrong with them and their game, Murray was not afraid. Not one bit. 

“I remember watching this kid that’s from Kitchener playing in the middle of, you know, I’m gonna call it the ‘hood or a rougher area, Jane and Finch, and he went out there and put on a show,” said George, who later became a certified NBA player agent, counting Murray as one of his clients. “Literally, just doing moves where he crossed a guy over so bad, he flew into the crowd.”

But it was Murray’s determined calm that stood out most. 

“Those environments, they can be a little more hectic, you know, a little intimidating, especially if you’re, like, from Kitchener, right?” said George. “And then for him to do whatever, right away right off the bat, people are like, ‘Who is that guy’? 

“I mean, most kids, when you bring them to that environment, they crumble, you know? They’re not used to, like, grown men in the stands yelling, ‘Yo, you suck’ and yelling different things. It’s intimidating to be around them dudes, and he was like, ‘Nope, you’re going to know my name by the time I leave this building’ and they sure did. And that’s when I realized … I think we just found a real one right here.” 

Murray was named tournament MVP and Bounce won the title. 

If form holds, the basketball world will get the full Murray experience beginning Thursday night. 

Through the first three rounds of the Nuggets’ post-season run, the now 26-year-old has been doing things that only the best can match, and sometimes, not even then. 

In 15 playoff games, Murray is averaging 27.7 points and 6.1 assists while converting nearly 10 three-point attempts a game 39.8 per cent, for a true shooting percentage of 59.5. As the Nuggets swept the Los Angeles Lakers during the Western Conference Finals, Murray become the first player in NBA history to average more than 30 points a game while shooting at least 50 per cent from the floor, 40 per cent from three and 90 per cent from the free-throw line. His 23-point explosion in the fourth quarter of Game 2 was the fourth time he’s scored at least 20 points in the fourth quarter of a playoff game, an NBA record, and Murray’s 30-point first half in Game 3 in Los Angeles effectively put the Lakers to sleep. 

It’s not the first time Murray — who has yet to make an All-Star team or average more than 21.2 points per game in his seven regular seasons — has raised his game in eye-popping fashion in the playoffs. In 2019-20 — before Murray missed part of 2020-21 and all of last season recovering from a torn ACL — he put on a show in the NBA bubble, scoring 26.6 points a game and shooting 45.3 per cent from deep, highlighted by an astounding three-game stretch in Denver’s epic first-round series against the Utah Jazz when he averaged 47.3 points on 62.9 per cent shooting from deep to lead the Nuggets back from a 3-1 deficit. He then scored 40 points in a Game 7 win over the Los Angeles Clippers in the second round before scoring only 25 points and averaging 7.4 assists as Denver fell in five games to the eventual champion Lakers. 

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That he’s hit that level again — and statistically surpassed it — after missing more than a full season with his knee injury is a testament to his determination and will. 

That in 48 career playoff games (and counting), he’s been able to elevate his performance — and often dramatically — is a testament to something else. 

What, exactly, no one can say. There has been a fair bit of academic literature devoted to determining if there is such a thing as the “clutch gene,” and, for the most part the conclusion is, there isn’t. There are moments when players can deliver exceptional performances in exceptional circumstances, but little evidence that certain people can do it consistently, at least relative to their play in “non-clutch” moments. 

Is Murray an exception? Who knows. Maybe over the course of a long career, his post-season play will regress to the mean, or his regular season production will rise to his playoff standards. Maybe they’ll meet in the middle. 

But it’s worth pointing out that Murray didn’t just start being clutch when he hit the NBA. Ever since he became an elite prospect, he’s demonstrated the ability to deliver huge games in pressurized moments. 

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A year after he put himself on the map with his showing at the Jane-Finch Classic — recruiting service North Pole Hoops immediately made him the No. 2 player in his high school class — Murray had his first taste of international basketball playing for the U16 Cadet team at the Tournament of the Americas in Uruguay. Canada was just beginning to assert itself as a force in age group hoops, and medals were hard to come by. In a semifinal game against Argentina, Murray popped off for 27 points — no one else managed double figures — while leading Canada to a fourth-quarter comeback to force overtime before falling by one point as Canada took bronze.

“He lives for the big game,” said then-U16 head coach Dave DeAveiro. “We were trying to get over the hump and beat Argentina, which we hadn’t been able to do, and he rose to that challenge. He wanted that challenge, he embraced it.”

The moments kept coming. Murray was named the MVP of the Jordan Brand Classic international game in 2013, and in 2014, played for the world team at the prestigious Nike Hoop Summit, a rare honour for a high school underclassman. He put up 10 points and five assists in 28 minutes in the U19 event, but more importantly learned a key lesson. “After that game, I realized, ‘All these great players got nothing on me,’” Murray told ESPN.com in 2019. “Because I’m always going to have the mental edge.”

Sure enough, he returned to the Hoop Summit a year later as a high school senior and won MVP honours with a 30-point showing in a 103-101 win against a U.S. team that featured Jaylen Brown, Brandon Ingram, Jalen Brunson and Luke Kennard. 

“When it comes to rising to the moment, he’s the best I’ve ever been around,” said Roy Rana, the former Sacramento Kings assistant, Canadian national team head coach and long-time coach for the World Team at the Hoop Summit, one of the primary pre-draft identification showcases for the NBA. “When the moment gets bigger, he gets bigger. A lot of time’s, that’s cliché — clutch this and clutch that —  but he’s unique because he’s the embodiment of that. When the pressure rises, when things become really kind of heightened, it’s like he’s Superman. He puts on a new costume and just comes out and kills it. 

“I remember at one point (in the 2015 game), he made a mistake, a wrong read or something, and he just turned to me and apologized in the middle of the game, like, ‘Sorry, I’ll be better,’ and he just kept playing. His confidence never wavers. There’s no self-doubt. His focus skills are extreme. There’s no athlete I’ve been around that has that ability, and not like once in a while, it’s consistent: he takes over the game when the moments are the biggest.”

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The how or the why are obviously questions that need answering. Murray’s father, Roger, introduced his son to martial arts and meditation at a young age, and put him through intense tests during his training, often done outdoors in winter. 

Nature or nurture, who knows, but Murray has always known how to make an entrance. He made his debut with the Canadian men’s senior national team in 2015 at the Pan Am Games. It wasn’t the Olympics or the World Championships, but it was at home, in a packed gym in downtown Toronto, and by the time semifinals matchup against Team USA arrived, Canada had a rare chance to guarantee itself an international medal at a FIBA sanctioned event, something it hadn’t managed since the 1936 Olympics. Trailing 80-74, then-men’s head coach and current Sacramento Kings assistant Jay Triano put the ball in the hands of Murray, the only high schooler on the floor with NBA prospects, NBA players and otherwise veteran pros. 

The Nuggets star provided one of the most electric moments in recent Canadian basketball history, scoring 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime, including a three to force the extra period and two more in the additional frame to seal it. 

“People say, ‘He’s got it, he has it in him’ all the time about guys,” said Carl English, the former Canadian national team star and European pro whose minutes Murray ended up taking down the stretch that afternoon. “Hard for me to complain about that,” he said, joking. “But they don’t really understand what ‘Having it in you’ means, right? So I think a big thing with Jamal was he was just fear fearless. It’s very difficult to walk into a room filled with NBA guys or really good European pros for the first time and come in there and be fearless. But doing it at 17 or 18 years old? … That’s a special player.” 

Murray has never been anything but. At every level, from the Jane and Finch Classic and all the way up to the Western Conference Finals, the guard from the 519 has never not found a way to deliver, to put his imprint on the moment. 

There’s no reason to believe the NBA Finals will be any different.

More from Sportsnet

NBA Notebook: ‘Selfless superstar’ Jokic, Canada’s Murray set for Finals debuts

From formative days in Kitchener to the NBA Finals, Canada’s Murray in spotlight

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