And here I thought that Jamal Murray was going to be cursed forever by the universe for trying to get 50 against the Celtics by chucking up a last-second three with the game already won. I didn’t have a problem with it, but me and the universe don’t see eye-to-eye on many things (where are my mass-produced ready-to-eat PopTart sandwiches?), and it was clear that karmic forces had decreed that Murray was going to suck (relatively speaking) for the rest of his career. Maybe he’d be allowed to have the occasional good game, but nothing consistent, because of how he selfishly tried to get a 50-burger.
Turns out I was wrong, the universe is as cold and unfeeling as ever, it doles out neither punishments nor rewards except randomly, and Murray was just going through a slump. Slumps happen to everybody, but it’s much more fun to believe that some higher power had something to do with it. There’s a whole branch of thought out there called “religion” that believes about the same thing, and I’m told that it has many adherents. Perhaps thousands.
Perhaps we can say the slump is over. Maybe it ended when he scored 31 last game, but it definitely ended here tonight with this 46-point explosion. He’s been shooting sub-30 percent on threes this season, but tonight he went 9/11 (conspiracy alert watch for chemtrails) from deep. He didn’t quite do well enough to get Nikola Jokic the 10 assists he needed for a triple-double (he also didn’t grab the two rebounds Jokic needed), so that’s a shame, and really, 50 would’ve been nicer. If he scored 50, I could move on from him on this channel and go back to wondering when they heck DeJounte Murray is going to come back.
Can you believe I used to confuse those two players? That was so long ago. Man, time flies when you’re having fun making highlights of role-players.