At the start of the summer, Jamal Murray and the Denver Nuggets agreeing to a four-year, $209 million max contract extension seemed like a foregone conclusion. That despite how he didn’t play up to his standards in the 2024 playoffs — 20.6 points a game but shooting 31.5% from 3 — due to him playing through an injury. However, the talks were postponed until after the Olympics. Then Murray struggled in Paris with Team Canada.
After the Games ended and time went by with no deal inked, whispers started around the league. Were the money-conscious Nuggets having second thoughts about maxing out Murray? Might they postpone giving him the extension until later in this season or maybe after the season?
No, the deal is done, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, via Murray’s agents.
Murray is now locked in for five years — at a total of $244 million — and is with the Nuggets through the rest of Nikola Jokic’s prime. During last season, Murray averaged 21.2 points, 6.5 assists, and shot 42.5% from 3, but he played in just 59 games.
Denver is betting big that once healthy, Murray will return to his 2023 playoff form when he was one of the top point guards in the league, was hitting clutch shots, was a top pick-and-roll combo with Jokic, and was the second most important player on a championship Nuggets team. With Denver having moved on from reliable role players in recent seasons such as Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, more falls on the team’s core to lift them up (Denver is also banking on Christain Braun and Peyton Watson to be able to take a step forward and carry them).
This is the bet Denver had to make — Murray is both capable of that level of play and has a strong working relationship with Jokic, and it’s not like an elite point guard was in the wings to replace him. Murray and Jokic mesh well together. The key is for him to stay healthy, he had a torn ACL a few years ago that took him until 2023 to fully recover from, then he battled through assorted injuries last season. These Nuggets do not have that margin for error.
What they do have is Murray locked in, and with Jokic, that makes them a contender for the foreseeable future.
