According to the Denver Nuggets injury report, Jamal Murray will miss the next game with a hamstring injury.
The official designation for Murray’s injury is a ‘right hamstring strain.’ Murray will be OUT for Monday’s matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans, a team that is missing guard CJ McCollum after he sustained a right lung injury.
Murray suffered the hamstring injury early in the second quarter against the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night. Live in the arena, there wasn’t a noticeable moment when the star point guard sustained the injury, but upon a dead ball a minute into the quarter, Murray asked out of the game and immediately limped into the tunnel.
“You always worry about those kinds of injuries because they can stick around for a while,” Michael Malone shared postgame of Murray’s injury. “So we have to be smart about it.”
Depending on the severity of the injury, the Nuggets may have to contend without Murray for a while. The Nuggets have larger goals than winning games in November, and the team also has enough talent to win even with Murray sidelined. There will be more clarity about the severity of the injury in the coming days. Perhaps the Nuggets will be without Murray for just a week or so. Perhaps it will be far longer than that.
Through his first six games, Murray was averaging 18.7 points, 8.7 assists, and 2.7 rebounds while shooting 43.7% from three-point range. Those numbers dropped after he played just 10 minutes against the Bulls and had two points, zero assists, and two rebounds. Murray’s unspoken quest to earn his first All-Star appearance could be in jeopardy if the star point guard misses an extended period of time, so hopefully he can recover quickly and play at an All-Star caliber level upon his return.
“The great thing about us tonight,” Malone emphasized postgame on Saturday night, “We used Aaron Gordon as our backup point guard. We used Reggie Jackson. We used Collin Gillespie.”
He’s right in that the Nuggets were able to get through the second half of a game against a 2-5 Chicago Bulls team on the second night of a back-to-back that doesn’t have great point guard play. That doesn’t mean the same will be true in the coming days or weeks. For example, after the Pelicans on Monday night, Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors come to town. The Nuggets will need strong point guard play, or at least point guard defense, to slow down both Curry and sixth man Chris Paul.
Expect Reggie Jackson to start in place of Murray initially, but there’s also logic in starting a wing and letting Jackson remain with the bench unit. The Nuggets having Nikola Jokić is a luxury because he can orchestrate the offense from anywhere on the floor, operating out of the post, running dribble handoffs with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Michael Porter Jr., and playing two-man game with Aaron Gordon. Perhaps the best thing for the Nuggets is to leave Jackson with the bench to continue running the second unit while someone like Christian Braun, Julian Strawther, or even Justin Holiday starts in place of Murray.
Whatever the case, the Nuggets are about to be tested by more than just fatigue early in the season.
