It’s been a while, and Denver Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray is still struggling to score the basketball.
Averaging just 17.7 points per game, Murray doesn’t look like the same player he was during the 2023 playoff run. There’s less explosiveness in his movements. Murray simply looks more tentative than before, thinking about most of the moves he’s trying to make in an effort to not mess up.
Without getting into the psychology of it all, let’s just focus on the numbers and compare the 2023-24 season and 2024-25 seasons together using Per 36 minutes to adjust for playing time:
- 2023-24 — 24.2 points, 7.4 assists, 51.0% on 2-pointers, 42.5% on 3-pointers, 58.6 TS%
- 2024-25 — 17.8 points, 6.3 assists, 47.6% on 2-pointers, 33.3% on 3-pointers, 52.9 T8%
Yes, the efficiency is down across the board. Murray’s in a self-proclaimed shooting slump and is struggling to get out of it. His shooting in the restricted area has bounced back, but anywhere outside of three feet has seen a decrease, especially on three-pointers.
But we’ve seen Murray shooting slumps before, especially early in the season. There was always a degree of confidence that he would break himself out of a slump over time.
Right now, the bigger concern is the scoring volume. Murray’s usage rate, according to Basketball Reference, is at just 22.2%. That’s the lowest usage of his career since his rookie season. He’s simply shooting less than ever before, and that’s more cause for concern because it’s rattling the Nuggets pecking order.
Murray has always been Denver’s second option scorer. Ask anybody on or around the Nuggets, and they will tell you the first option is Jokic and the second option is Murray. That’s effectively been Denver’s pecking order since Murray’s second season in the NBA...seven years ago.
That’s a major shift for a Nuggets team built on continuity.
There’s always a possibility that this is a normal early season scoring slump for Murray, a notorious slow starter. Here are his numbers in each of his last six seasons from the beginning of the season through the end of November:
- 2018-19: 23.0% Usage, 50.9% True Shooting
- 2019-20: 25.6% Usage, 53.2% True Shooting
- 2020-21: 23.3% Usage, 55.4% True Shooting (thru end of January due to COVID schedule)
- Missed 2021-22
- 2022-23: 27.0% Usage, 53.5% True Shooting
- 2023-24: 23.6% Usage, 53.5% True Shooting
- 2024-25: 22.7% Usage, 52.4% True Shooting
Those scoring numbers are all shockingly similar. It doesn’t make the slow starts okay, but that should provide some hope that Murray can bounce back and become a better version of himself in due time.
Now, if somebody could tell Murray to hurry up, that would be great.
