![]() ![]() After Game 3, when he countered that fleetingly successful gambit and scored 34 points on 22 shots, they trapped him more and tried to take away Jokic as a release valve by rotating a third defender into their actions. Murray guaranteed that it would be for Miami, especially later in the series.Īfter Game 1, when Murray scored 26 points on 22 shots to open the series, the Heat put Jimmy Butler on him and brought strong-side help in the midrange to curtail his scoring. A switch is usually a deathknell for the defense. ![]() The alternatives likely meant granting one of them an open road to rock out.īut their contrasting builds and repertoires are similarly why they both bask in those chances. That is why Miami resigned itself to switching their screens so frequently. Their two-man game is prevalent in an array of actions. Anywhere within ~25 feet of the hoop graces their scoring domains. They’re a pair of three-level scorers, one of whom is 6’4 and an off-the-dribble killer, the other of whom is 6’11, a passing savant and an unflinching workhorse down low, in addition to his other exploits that such a brief label cannot properly capture. Murray and Jokic are the NBA’s most harmonic star duo. Sometimes, Miami’s least harmful option was to switch. Murray’s cadence continually eased offense for the Nuggets and placed Miami in a bind.Ī few of these plays don’t even result in assists for him, but underscore he and Denver’s steadfast capacity to weaponize the multifaceted nature of their offense. Cadence is a crucial component of effective ball-handling great initiators like Steve Nash and Chris Paul exemplify its vitality. Time and time again, he strung out a ball screen by wielding his scoring aura and occupying Adebayo to thread open shots or mismatches for his MVP dance partner. Instead, the Nuggets ruthlessly expose mismatches and are keen recognizing how and when to solidify them, but refuse to seek them out to the detriment of offensive flow. Whereas a prolific regular season offense like the Boston Celtics sees possessions devolve, with attempts to laser in on a specific mismatch stalling out - which ultimately hampered their playoff viability - Denver does not get sidetracked the Philadelphia 76ers were schematically different than Boston but encountered similar postseason hurdles following regular season profits. Jokic’s brilliance and versatility anchors their league-best offense, but the intentionality and selectivity behind their hunting of mismatches are distinguishing pillars as well. ![]() One of the hallmarks of this wheeling and dealing Nuggets offense is its discretion. Not only did it represent progress from earlier in his career, it represented progress from earlier in these playoffs, when he sometimes dribbled possessions to a halt or overindulged in self-creation pursuits because he deemed an individual matchup advantageous. Long considered a combo guard whose scoring gusto masked some decision-making warts, he thrived as a decision-maker in the grandest series of his life, even if the occasional hiccups persisted. He is the Nuggets’ premier facilitator and initiates possessions nightly for them. With a velcro handle and generational playmaking, Jokic is often considered a towering, jumbo-sized point guard and understandably so. The Murray-Nikola Jokic soirée never quieted primarily because Jokic cannot be schemed against, but also because Murray had an answer almost every time as well. One of the NBA’s foremost defenders was relentlessly in his airspace, while one of its foremost tacticians constantly dialed up novel looks to try and stymie him. Murray was treated like a star because he played like a star in the face of all those gameplans.Īmid that carousel of defensive tactics, the 26-year-old logged 50 assists to only 17 giveaways in five games. They shifted how, where and when the help defense arrived. They implemented zones of different formations. They had Adebayo hover around the level of the screen. The Heat, headlined by Bam Adebayo and flanked by a slew of physical, rangy perimeter defenders, devoted numerous coverages his direction. Despite the declines, Murray remained a riddle the defense could not solve. Against the Miami Heat, those marks fell to 21.4 and 55.1. As the Denver Nuggets rampaged through the Western Conference this year, he averaged 27.7 points on 59.5 percent true shooting. In 2020, he averaged 26.5 points on 62.6 percent true shooting. During Jamal Murray’s last two playoff runs, the focus rightfully fixated on his remarkable blend of scoring volume and efficiency. ![]()
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