This summer was supposed to be Canadian basketball’s coming out party. The moment when years of promise and anticipation were realized on the world stage.
Jamal Murray was supposed to be leading the charge. As the most accomplished of Canada’s broad wave of NBA talent, the plan was for Murray to lead the most gifted national team the country has ever had to new heights – first by leading Canada in qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics and then onto the podium for the first time since 1936.
It didn’t happen – and not through any fault of Murray’s.
The Olympics were postponed until 2021 due to the pandemic — and even that looks uncertain in the absence of a widely available vaccine.
But Murray? He has decided to make Canada heard anyway; giving the Canadian basketball community a new voice in the process.
Sunday night he delivered another in a line of epic games, as he scored 50 points on 17-of-24 shooting — with 22 points in the fourth quarter alone — as the Denver Nuggets staved off elimination and forced a Game 7 on Tuesday.
It was Murray’s second 50-point outing in the past three games. The 142 points he’s scored since Game 4 is a three-game playoff total surpassed only by Michael Jordan (1988) and Jerry West (1965) in NBA history, according to Justin Kubatko of Basketball-Reference.com
But it’s not just the Nuggets star’s showing on the floor.
It was an emotional post-game interview where Murray made an even more indelible mark. As the camera panned to his custom-made Adidas shoes, with images of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — whose deaths by police have become rallying points for the Black Lives Matter movement and social justice causes everywhere — Murray fought against his own emotions while trying to share an important message.
“These shoes mean a lot. With all the …” said Murray, with a long pause to gather himself while being interviewed live on TNT. “These shoes mean a lot …
“I just want to win,” Murray went on. “In life, you find things that hold value to you, things to fight for. We found something worth fighting for, as the NBA, as a collective unit. I use these shoes as a symbol to me to keep fighting, all around the world.”
“It’s not just in America,” he added. “It happens everywhere.”
Watching at home, Sherman Hamilton felt Murray’s emotion resonating, even from 2000 kilometres away. The Toronto Raptors analyst and former national team star was in awe of what Murray had done on the floor, but to see a Canadian NBA player speak so openly about social justice issues and connect what has been happening in the U.S. to issues that exist elsewhere – presumably Canada – was a thump to the chest, too.
“He was raw. A guy scores 50 points and forces a Game 7, there was a lot of things he could have talked about,” Hamilton said. “But I just thought the awareness, the real emotion that he showed … it was [a]‘This is the hill I’m going to die on’ type of moment, and he added in there, it’s not just the U.S. — this is happening everywhere. His Canadian side, or his international side flavour was represented.
“It was real and it hit me hard, watching it … as a black man there is a knock on showing emotion and if it’s done, it’s done behind closed doors, so there was something that was very refreshing about him being open and being honest and showing the tears and fighting through it, which is [a]symbol of what we’ve had to do as Black people, right?”
With one Canadian franchise in the NBA, the social justice issues that have been such an important undercurrent to the league’s decision to restart the pandemic-disrupted season has at times been a slightly awkward fit.
When Raptors players speak about racial issues and social justice, they can’t help but come from an American perspective. Raptors head coach Nick Nurse is working to get out the vote, but it’s aimed at American expats living in Canada.
But Canada has racial issues too – ranging from relations with police, to school streaming, to economic challenges – so Murray tipping his hat meant a lot.
Similarly, the Canadian national team hasn’t struggled at times with proper representation, given the players the program draws on are often Black and/or first-generation Canadians.
Hearing Murray speak was welcomed.
“The way he explained himself and the emotion he showed, that’s how everyone kind of feels here,” said Oshae Brissett, the Raptors forward from Mississauga, Ont., and a friend of Murray. “… I always say, what’s going on doesn’t only happen in one spot. It’s all over the place. Sometimes it’s not caught on camera. He speaks for Canadians because I know people who – while they might not have passed away from stuff like that – but have been racially profiled, have had all the stuff happen we don’t want to happen to them in Canada. It’s a worldwide thing … His game, his 50 points, 40 points, all that it speaks for itself, but what he said showed the kind of person he is and how we’re all feeling.”
Murray has made a career out of meeting the moment. He first burst onto the U.S. basketball scene when his club coaches and voices from the Canadian national team program lobbied for him to be added to the Jordan Brand All-Star game – a major recruiting event. He didn’t have the profile of some of the other participants, but it hardly mattered. In his first major U.S. showcase in 2013, he scored 24 points and won MVP honours.
It’s been a pattern. At the Nike Hoop Summit in 2015, he put up 30 and won the MVP award. And in his senior national team debut that summer, he came off the bench and scored 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime to lead Canada to a semifinal win over Team USA, which was before he’d even enrolled at the University of Kentucky as a freshman.
“We’ve seen this before,” Canadian national team general manager Rowan Barrett said. “Outside of his skill and his talent, he’s a gamer. You can have skill and talent and all of that, and not be a gamer. He’s a gamer. When there’s a moment in the game and things are sliding the wrong way and you need to make a play – a steal, an assist, a shot, a tip – he provides that at that time. His full arsenal is on display and [as]a Canadian it’s great to see that.”
He not only has the game to be the leader of the Canadian NBA contingent and a role model for the next generation, but he has the conviction to resonate with them, too.
His father, Roger Murray, arrived in Canada from Jamaica before Murray was born, but passed on some of those experiences to his son, making sure he understood the importance of persevering.
“The struggles that Roger went through, Jamal saw it and he instilled in Jamal [the]importance of overcoming,” said Mike George, Murray’s agent and himself a trailblazer as one of the first Canadians to break into NBA player representation. “And everything Jamal has done – from staying in Canada in high school and flying under the radar – he’s always flown under the radar … but their view is, ‘Don’t worry about it; we’ll get it [the respect]when it’s time. We’ll just work harder.’”
The work has paid off. Only Steve Nash himself has had playoff moments that even approach what Murray has managed over the past six games. The difference is the two-time NBA MVP didn’t arrive as a playoff performer until he was in his late 20s.
Proud of you, Jamal Murray @BeMore27
— Steve Nash (@SteveNash) August 31, 2020
Murray is 23. The best is yet to come and there is more to be said.
“Steve Nash was Captain Canada, but this guy was representing all of us,” said Hamilton, who shared backcourt duties with Nash at the Olympic Games in 2000. “And I hope that white [Canadians] see that, because this is class, this [is]big time. This is what we want to represent our country on a global scale.”
It’s not the moment Canadian hoops fans might have been hoping for this summer, but it’s the best we have for now, and it’s pretty special.
“When he spoke, there was only one line about the game,” Hamilton said. “He’s [a]good young man. It just connected me to the feeling of we have another good young man, he’s championing the cause and he’s not afraid to say what he feels and to me, that’s very inspirational.”
