Whenever I see Jamal Murray have a good game it seems like he’s doing all his damage in the fourth quarter. Since he doesn’t have enough confidence from his coach yet to be a “closer”, I figure most of his points come in games that have already been decided one way or another, such as this one. But if he can play so well against other team’s end-of-game lineups, why can’t he get more minutes early in games?
Part of the problem is that Gary Harris is such a beast at the shooting guard position that there are few minutes for Murray there. Maybe Murray’s natural position is actually point guard, which would be good news for him from a minutes perspective (LOL MUDIAY DNPS), but I don’t know. Somebody who watches more Nuggets games than I do will have to clue me in as to his real position, even if it’s just “combo guard”.
What I do know is that Murray can get hot pretty quickly, so the strategy might be to play him a little bit in the second quarter to see if he’s hot, and if he’s not, you can just bench him for the rest of the game and give those minutes to other guys. That’s cool and all, but maybe Murray should be playing the full 48 minutes so he can win ROTY of the year and score eighteen points per game. Just a thought.