Defying doubters, Jamal Murray's work ethic a result of father's tactics

Roger Murray has always been asked to justify his means to an end. The means being the unorthodox tactics he used to train his son, Jamal Murray, to be in top physical and mental shape from a young age. The ends being for Jamal to reach the NBA and one day become a champion. 

Roger and Jamal achieved that goal on June 12, 2023, when the younger Murray averaged 21-6-10 on 45-39-93 shooting in the NBA Finals en route to the Denver Nuggets’ first ever championship. 

“It was good to see one of his, or our, goals be accomplished,” Roger told Sportsnet.ca inside of Scotiabank Arena after a Nuggets win over the Toronto Raptors last week. “When you play a sport and you love a sport, you always want to get to the top. And I think that was one of his, that's one of our goals, is to get to the top, win a championship. So, it was good to see.”

It must have been extra sweet for the Murrays to reach basketball’s mountaintop given the unorthodox path they took there, the path they carved for other young Canadians to follow, and the skeptics they silenced along the way. 

Growing up in Kitchener, Ont., in the early 2000s, Roger had to find ways for his son to stay competitive despite a lack of top-end basketball talent in the area. That challenge became even less straightforward when Jamal decided to stay home for high school, helping turn Athlete Institute (Orangeville Prep Basketball Academy) into an Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association (OSBA) powerhouse rather than following in the footsteps of Cory Joseph, Tristan Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and the latest generation of Canadian players who attended prep schools in the United States before going to the NCAA. 

But Murray also trained extensively with his father growing up, and the methods Roger used are well documented: after developing an affection for the famous martial artist Bruce Lee, who never showed fear or backed down from a challenge, Roger began to read books on Kung Fu and taught his son some of the tactics. Jamal started showering before games to "refresh his body" and would find a quiet space in the locker room to meditate and visualize things before games to help lower his in-game heart rate. Roger also used some unorthodox training methods to help Jamal increase his pain tolerance and mental fortitude, having his son do pushups in the snow or balance a cup of hot tea on his thigh during a squat.

As Murray’s star rose, Roger was often asked to explain himself, admitting that there were people in their Kitchener community who felt he was pushing his son too hard. Not that he ever wavered in his beliefs: After all, Roger knew that Jamal wanted to become an NBA player since he was a boy who wouldn't put down the basketball, and he did everything in his power to help him get there, skeptics be damned.

"The whole idea was to get him to block out what he was feeling — that it was only temporary,” Roger told Bleacher Report in 2015 about the pain-tolerance drills. “Some kids get hit or cut and immediately think it's worse than it is. I tried to show him that pain is something we all go through, that it's a part of life. If you don't get freaked out by it, you can get past it."

While the process may have been controversial, you cannot argue with the results. At just 26 years old, Murray is one of the best players in the NBA, with a championship to his name. And, more to the point, Murray never gets fazed and is known for playing his best basketball when the lights are the brightest and the pressure is on.

It started during his miraculous run in the NBA Bubble in 2019-20, when Murray averaged 31.6 points in a seven-game series against the Utah Jazz, including two 50-point games, helping lead the Nuggets to back-to-back come-from-behind series victories and their first conference finals appearance since 2009. 

And it culminated in the championship run last season, when Murray averaged 26-6-7 on 47-40-93 shooting splits throughout the playoffs, helping the Nuggets achieve a 16-4 record — the best for any team since the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors. In fact, Murray has scored 35 points or more in nine of his 53 playoff games, while doing it only 11 times in his 428 regular season games.

“Playoff Jamal was real,” Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said. “What he did in the playoffs was just incredible. What he did in the NBA Finals, (averaging) 20-10-6, you don’t see that very often, when the stakes are at their highest.”

One of Murray's most impressive traits is his ability to stay calm during the most intense moments of a game, which could go back to the meditative practices he was taught as a kid and which he still does to this day. In fact, the Murray-Nikola Jokic two-man game is arguably the best and most consistent late-game option in the league and a big reason the Nuggets have had a winning record in “close” games for seven straight seasons. 

“He's really our closer,” Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon said about Murray. “So, you got to just manage that, manage the game, pace himself. So when it comes down to the last like eight minutes of the game, or the last three minutes of the game, or the last 45 seconds of the game, he has the energy to close for us.”

Gordon has seen Murray’s growth firsthand, noting that the most consequential shift that occurred during the championship run was when Murray mastered the balance between scoring and playmaking despite all the different coverages playoff defences were throwing at him. That's when Murray became the ultimate “floor general," according to Gordon. “Being calm, being patient. Understanding when to pass and when to score has been amazing. It's helped us so much.” 

“I feel like he elevated every single aspect of his game,” Nuggets forward Zeke Nnaji said about Murray during the championship run. “Like, he's always been a great player, but he was playing at a supernatural level from the shots that he was making to the shots that he was creating to the defence that he was playing. He was able to pick up full court. He had incredible stamina. It felt like he never got tired.”

On top of being clutch, Murray is one of the best-conditioned and most disciplined athletes in the world. After suffering a major ACL injury in 2021, he came back to average 40 minutes a game during the Nuggets’ 20-game championship run, carrying a usage percentage of 27.9 per cent while getting targeted on defence in every series. That stamina is another thing his father helped him develop by doing cardio even when he didn’t feel like it, knowing it would pay off down the line. 

“He's a guy who's really on top of all his stuff,” Nnaji said. “He works out a lot, comes in at night as well, takes care of his body. And to see the work that he put in to come back and lead us to a championship as well is pretty incredible. 

"So, I mean, it speaks to his character, his work ethic, and we all feed off of that.”

As the Nuggets aim to repeat as champions and fulfill their lofty goals as the NBA’s next dynasty, Murray is trying to find his rhythm. He has already suffered minor hamstring and ankle injuries that have kept him out of 14 games this season and is on a minutes restriction that has him averaging fewer than 30 minutes a game for the 22-10 Nuggets. 

“I'm still trying to get there,” Murray said. “I'm just trying to build my way up and stay healthy for the remainder of the season. It's been a rocky beginning, but I think we're on the right track.”

Health issues are also responsible for Murray dropping out of playing for Team Canada at the 2023 FIBA World Cup last summer after participating in the full training camp. But despite not representing his country on the international stage since the 2015 Pan Am Games — when he broke out as a player, scoring 22 points in the final quarter and overtime of Canada’s comeback win over Team USA in the semifinals — Murray is a member of the “summer core” and has participated in training camps two summers in a row, making him eligible to compete for Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

Even though he was unable to compete last summer, Murray said it was “amazing” to see Canada win its first ever World Cup medal while qualifying for its first Olympics since 2000. “For everybody, that's a great accomplishment. That's a country accomplishment. They did it for the country,” Murray said. “I still showed up to training camp. I was still around the guys. I felt the vibe there. And they did a great job.

“And I think we're on the come-up and we've got enough guys to go out there and compete for gold next year.”

Murray said he “for sure” wants to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics, where he could star in the most talented backcourt in the world alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Oklahoma City Thunder star is having the best season of his career and arguably the best for a Canadian ever, averaging 31-6-7 on 54-30-91 shooting splits, along with a league-leading 2.8 steals for the 20-9 Thunder.

Murray and Gilgeous-Alexander are set to meet Friday at Ball Arena as the Nuggets and Thunder face off for the third time this season.

“Amazing. Amazing. Playing really well — on both ends of the floor, as well, which I think most people talk about (the offence),” Murray said about Gilgeous-Alexander. “He's just always aggressive. He's always a threat out there every time you guard them.

“So it's nice to watch him lead the team and Team Canada getting that bronze.”

Already, the Americans are thinking about what a fully healthy version of Team Canada could look like at the Olympics. “If you have a backcourt of Jamal Murray and Shai, I mean, you have a great chance of — I think the sky was the limit for them if Jamal was healthy,” Nuggets guard Reggie Jackson said. “I think their chances of course are heightened, way better, if he was there.”

“I was actually thinking about Team Canada as we were driving in here. Pretty good,” Gordon added. “S---, the backcourt of Shai and Jamal is crazy.”

Still, Gordon acknowledged that “as soon as you run into America, it’s problems. Maybe not the American team that we put out last year at FIBA, but if you run into the people that are supposed to be on the team. ... Y’all not beating the Americans, my guy.”

“But Jamal will help. Jamal is a f------ problem. But he’s not gonna push y’all over the Americans.” 

Given the American talent that has already stated their intentions to play for Team USA at the Olympics this summer, Gordon is probably right. But the fact that it is even a conversation shows how far Canada has come as a basketball nation. 

For now, however, Roger and Jamal aren’t concerned with any of that — they are satisfied in knowing that all their hard work has paid off, not just for themselves, but for the next generation of Canadian ballers. After all, there are kids today following Jamal’s footsteps as a result of his success. Whether that’s by doing unorthodox drills to improve their physical and mental strength, staying in Canada for high school to play in the burgeoning prep scene, playing for Team Canada at the youth level or simply believing in their ability to get to the NBA as much as the Murrays believed in theirs. 

“The market really opened up for kids to get a chance to play. And they’re showing that they can play,” Roger said.

“(There’s) more interest, and more development and more knowledge. And just when the kids come up and see that other players can, from the country, make it, play pro or whatever ... they have a different drive because they have something to look at as a measuring stick.”

As Jamal put it: “It's nice to be a pioneer in that sense for them.”