Why Jamal Murray's $208M deal was good news for Canada's basketball program

In the end, Jamal Murray got his money, and everyone around the Canadian men’s basketball program could breathe a massive sigh of relief.

The Denver Nuggets star closed the door on a challenging few months over the weekend when multiple reports surfaced that he had signed a four-year contract extension worth $208 million U.S.

The deal will kick in for the 2025-26 season and keep the 27-year-old under contract to the Nuggets through the 2028-29 season. That should give the Nuggets at least four more years of Murray sharing the floor with franchise cornerstone Nikola Jokic, providing plenty of runway for the elegant two-man game that helped Denver win the 2022-23 NBA championship to gun for another title.

As an aside, it makes Murray’s the highest-paid athlete in Canadian history, bringing his total guaranteed earnings to $344.5 million. Given he’ll only be 32 when he’s eligible to be a free agent, there’s a good chance he’ll be able to add to that.

It’s nice outcome for both Murray and for Mike George, his longtime agent who has been in Murray’s corner since the dynamic shooting guard was turning heads with CIA Bounce and Orangeville Prep.

It’s also a very good time to be an NBA star, as league revenues continue to drive player salaries up with seemingly no end in sight. Steve Nash won two MVPs and played 18 seasons but had to get by on $144.6 million when he retired in 2014, two years before Murray was drafted seventh overall out of the University of Kentucky.

More relevantly it means that Murray and the Nuggets can focus their full attention on staying on top of what promises to be a hugely competitive race to emerge from the Western Conference, where some of the rivals — the Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks and even the up-and-coming Houston Rockets — feature key members of Team Canada, in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nickeil Walker-Alexander, Dwight Powell and Dillon Brooks, respectively.

That mission got clouded a little bit this summer as Murray, playing for the senior men’s team for the first time since 2015, struggled mightily while in a Canadian uniform and whose performance — fairly or not — was an easy place to point a finger when Canada lost to France in the Olympic quarterfinals, falling short of what everyone involved was hoping would be medal-winning summer.

Poor performances in small sample sizes happen all the time, but they get amplified on a stage like the Summer Olympics. In that context Murray shooting 2-for-14 from three over four games or 9-of-31 overall — and not playing any better in the exhibition games Canada had in the tournament build-up — were truly shocking numbers.

The prospect of Murray finally taking the floor for Canada was so tantalizing because he’s the kind of player who has so often raised his game when the stakes are highest, as his career playoff scoring average prior to this year of 25 points per game on sparkling efficiency would attest.

But instead Murray looked a step slow, and even hesitant at times playing for Canada. Was he hurt? Lacking game fitness? Was he disappointed in having to come off the bench or uncomfortable not having the ball in his hands while playing alongside Gilgeous-Alexander?

There were whispers that touched on all of the above coming from all corners; the standard kind of venting that happens when teams fall short.

But Murray’s problem was that the Olympics weren’t an aberration. His sub-par performance this summer came on the heels of a regular season interrupted by nagging injuries and a poor playoff showing — Murray averaged just 20.6 points a game on 40.2 per cent shooting as Denver was eliminated in the second-round by Minnesota, adding fuel to a narrative that was already simmering. 

By the time the Olympics were over, Murray hadn’t had just a poor tournament, he had been playing miles below his standards for months.

And he still didn’t have a contract extension.

Back in Denver, there was a growing chorus of Nuggets faithful who didn’t want Denver to offer him one, quickly forgetting what Murray had done to help bring a title to the Mile High City.

Mark Kiszla, a prominent columnist with the Denver Gazette, made Murray’s contract the focus of his coverage of Canada’s loss for France, saying: “There’s no way a bust at the Olympics is worth a max contract in the NBA.”

The online commentary was worse.

In the end, calmer heads prevailed. Murray got his deal, as was hinted at when Nuggets president Josh Kroenke came out in support of his embattled star a couple of weeks ago:

“Jamal’s a great player, one of the best in the NBA,” Kroenke told the Denver Post. “He felt the Olympics were for him. Just reading some of his quotes, I know he was frustrated a little bit. So I have no doubt that he’ll use that the right way for motivation going into the season.”

He also implied that injuries were an issue for Murray in the playoffs and through the summer:

“When you’re going against the best in the world, whether it’s in the NBA playoffs or in the Olympics, you’re gonna get an opponent’s best shot. And if you’re not 100 per cent and you know you want to be out there still, you’re gonna try to fight through it like Jamal is. But I know he wasn’t 100 per cent. I know getting him back there is a big step toward seeing the Jamal who was throwing up triple-doubles in the NBA Finals.”

From a Canada Basketball point of view, the potential of Murray getting less than the contract he was hoping for was significant.

One of the selling points that has helped lift the program in the eyes of Canada’s top male players in recent years is that, in addition to the honour of playing for your country on one of the game’s biggest stages, is the notion that playing international basketball can enhance their professional careers.

It’s been true all the way back to Nash’s halcyon days with the program, as he credited his international experience with helping his transition to the NBA as a young player and his transition to stardom later in his career.

Brooks, for example, rode his red-hot summer helping lead Canada to the bronze medal at the FIBA World Cup of Basketball in 2023 to a solid bounce back campaign with Houston after a miserable finish to the 2022-23 season with Memphis; Alexander-Walker had a similar flow-through effect with the Timberwolves. Andrew Nembhard was eager to have the platform Canada provided this summer to build on his playoff breakout with the Indiana Pacers. For Gilgeous-Alexander, being the go-to player in high stakes games was the only piece of his résumé that still needed polishing after rebuilding years with Oklahoma City, and playing for Canada helped in that regard.

Gilgeous-Alexander didn’t become an MVP candidate because he played for Canada, but the experience didn’t hurt.

So the possibility that Murray’s performance for Canada — and while playing in an unfamiliar role as a secondary ball-handling coming off the bench — would be used against him in contract negotiations was a scenario the program simply didn’t want or need, not only because everyone involved wants the best for a prominent Canadian player, but also because it could conceivably be the kind of cautionary tale that could create obstacles in the future.

Fortunately, the worst case has been well avoided.

Murray is being rewarded for his proven track record of performance at the highest levels, with the Nuggets betting that at age 27 and entering his ninth season, his best basketball is still ahead of him.

For Canada it means that any frustrations over a summer that fell short of everyone’s goals have room to breathe and be smoothed over, and the notion that playing for Canada in any way hurt Murray’s value can be put to rest.

The 2028 Olympics are less than four years away, after all.