Some things are easy to get used to, even as they unfold in a series of pleasant, pleasing surprises.
Jamal Murray has been an NBA champion for less than two months. The memories of his epic run to and through the Finals with the Denver Nuggets are fresh. The images of downtown Denver turning into a massive, moving party are indelible.
For all those times he envisioned himself at the top of the sport during his gruelling workouts while growing up in Kitchener, since arriving there it turns out the view from the basketball mountain top is amazing, evolving but always some version of perfect.
“Honestly it’s like a constant. A constant trend up and every day is something different,” Murray said Wednesday after his second day of training with the Canadian senior men’s national team in advance of the FIBA Basketball World Cup.
“Everybody’s saying “champ” it don’t get old [but]I always realize what we accomplished. We did something special, and no one can ever take that away.”
But now Murray is trying for another piece of basketball immortality in a different uniform, and with different stakes. Canada has never won a medal at the World Cup at the senior men’s level and has qualified for only one Olympic tournament – the 2000 Games in Sydney – since 1988, a span of 36 years.
Over those four decades, Canada’s basketball profile has grown wildly – no country other than the U.S. puts more players in the NBA and Canada’s women’s and age group programs are among the best in the world – but it’s never translated to success on the senior men’s level.
Murray’s presence on the national team for the first time since 2015 when he was an 18-year-old playing at the Pan Am Games – scoring 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime to help Canada defeat the USA and earn a place in the gold medal final (where they won silver, losing to Brazil) – could go a long way to changing that.
Murray’s big-game credentials are impeccable: the 26-year-old is averaging 25 points, six assists and five rebounds a game over 53 career playoff starts, shooting 40 per cent from three along the way, and possesses a highlight reel of big games and big plays when his team has needed them most.
Team Canada head coach Jordi Fernandez was with Murray in Denver as an assistant to Mike Malone for six years before joining Mike Brown’s staff in Sacramento this past season.
He knows what he has in Murray from first-hand experience and is ecstatic to have him playing for him with Canada.
“Jamal has gotten better, right, over the years with his growth and his confidence. But one of the things that Jamal has always had is belief,” Fernandez said. “He always believed that he was so good. And if you said he wasn’t, he will prove you wrong. That’s a cool thing about him. I have never seen anybody that competes at that level. I’ve been with really, really good players and he would be like, to me, the ultimate fighter if I had to pick one.”
Much of the buzz around Canada’s prospects at the World Cup and the Olympics is that Fernandez won’t have to pick one. In Murray and backcourt mate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, he has two of the best closers in all of basketball. It’s a luxury almost no team in the world can match.
“Jamal and Shai are both made for big moments, and we have all seen it,” Fernandez said. “One thing that is not any different between the NBA and FIBA is in that fourth quarter, when the lights are on, those guys are going to perform. What makes me feel very good is that sometimes I’m going to have to help them and sometimes the best way to help them is to get out of the way. So, I’m very confident with those two guys and the rest of the group on how we are going to close games.
“It’s not always going to be pretty. There are going to be games that are going to be grinds and we will be ready to fight it, but you feel always better with those types of guys.”
How it works exactly will remain to be seen, though Murray’s elite three-point shooting makes it easy to envision him playing off the ball and hunting open looks generated by Gilgeous-Alexander’s ability to attack the paint almost at will.
However it works out, it promises to be fun to watch.
It’s impressive that it’s even happening. It would have been easy, understandable, and maybe even advisable for Murray to bow out of playing for Canada this summer. Two months is not a lot of downtime for a professional athlete and if Canada and Denver each achieve their respective team goals, the demands on Murray will be considerable: six weeks with Canada this summer, leading almost directly into training camp with the Nuggets, followed by a long NBA season and hopefully a title defence that would spill into June followed by another lengthy stint with the national team next summer should Canada qualify for the Olympics.
It’s a lot, especially for a player a year removed from missing a full NBA season due to an ACL injury.
Canada is being careful, accordingly. Murray has been practicing this week, but mostly walking through schemes and getting some shots up. His build-up is the subject of careful collaboration between Canada’s medical and training staff and their counterparts with the Nuggets.
The plan is for him to reach game readiness for the tournament opener against France on August 25th. He’ll ramp up slowly and, while expected to be available for Canada’s exhibition games beginning next week in Germany and then later in Spain, he isn’t likely to play in all of them.
“Yeah, it’s a process,” said Murray. “My body, my pace is a little bit different than everybody else right now, just trying to keep cool and stick to my jump shot right now. Can rely on that always.”
But that he’s in camp with an eye on travelling to Europe and then Indonesia after standing at the pinnacle of the NBA is proof that Canada can depend on him as he tries to make it to the top of another basketball peak.
“This is a summer that’s going to be unforgettable, I’ll remember this year for the rest of my life,” Murray said, sounding like the Nuggets victory parade was two days ago, not two months past. “[But] I want to be here, I want to play, I want to see the guys, be around the guys, be a part of this. Everybody knows these are good friends of mine, we’re not just teammates, we’re peers. We all grew up playing against each other, playing with each other so it’s fun to be in this environment and just have fun playing basketball.”
