The Jamal Murray extension was the best scenario for both sides

The Denver Nuggets extended their championship window on Saturday by extending star point guard Jamal Murray to a giant four-year $208 million deal.

While Murray struggled down the stretch with his play and again in the Olympics on top of his ongoing years-long battle with injuries, the lone way the Nuggets capture another title in the Nikola Jokic era is with the Blue Arrow. Likewise, Murray wouldn’t have gotten this amount of money from any other team even with him forgoing the chance at a supermax contract.

Without Murray, the Nuggets would not have the appropriate mechanisms—be it money and assets—to trade for a player of his caliber. Leaving Jokic without his perfect partner. And without the Nuggets, Murray would likely not have the supporting structure that he needs to accomplish some of the individual honors he seeks, like an All-Star Game.

Selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft, Murray went from being a sweet-shooting one-and-done combo guard at Kentucky into one of the stronger guards in the pros. His shooting, bounce, ferocity and strong finishes have perfectly complimented the three-time MVP Jokic. Murray has grown in almost every single season but bad luck with his knees already shortened the Nuggets title chances. Finally reaching his peak in the 2020 Bubble, Murray became a giant star with multiple 50-point playoff performances as the Nuggets battled back from two 3-1 series deficits to advance to the Western Conference Finals where they lost to the champion Lakers. A year later and a year better, Murray and the Nuggets took off and with the addition of Aaron Gordon looked like the best team in the NBA. Shortly after AG came to Denver, Murray blew up his knee, and would miss the next two playoff runs.

His first year back from a torn ACL resulted in many career highs and a key role in the Nuggets title run, where Murray and Jokic became the first duo to record 30-point triple-doubles in an NBA game—doing so in the pivotal Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Murray’s playoff highs proved to be more than just bubble-made.

Going into last season Murray was extension eligible but he played the season out in hopes of securing a more lucrative supermax contract which he could have signed had he been named to an All-NBA Team. Despite some regular season improvements in shooting and helpers, Murray didn’t play enough ball to even become eligible. And those same leg injuries that cost him regular season games heavily impacted his explosiveness in the playoffs and again in the Olympics.

Meanwhile, the Nuggets have had two brutal offseasons where they’ve had huge talents at the guard spot like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown depart. Given the Nuggets abysmal history with free agents, how much more the team would have to lose before even generating enough cap space to sign a lesser player than Murray like Fred VanVleet and how Denver can’t waste any of Jokic’s prime—there was no real choice but for the Nuggets to give Murray what he wanted. And Murray wasn’t going to like what he found on the open market after his last two journeys to the national stage were so ugly, on top of the fact that Denver had the ability to offer more than any other team.

Murray could have played out the year in hopes of an All-NBA team nod and supermax deal or even to leave in free agency, but this is the compromise for both sides that each lacked leverage.

But what each side may have lacked in bargaining chips, they make up for in hope.

The hope is that Murray’s leg injuries go away and that his eighth season in the NBA can be the best one yet, followed up with enough years to definitely end his career as the Nuggets best and most accomplished point guard ever. The hope is that the team can still find a way to keep both Gordon and Michael Porter Jr. in the changing salary landscape of the NBA and compete both now and for the next few years. The hope is that Peyton Watson or Christian Braun can take a leap for the Nuggets.

Is it a lot of hope? Yeah, but it takes a lot of hope to dream big—and score a second title for a franchise that never felt likely to even raise one banner. And again, the alternate to Murray not signing this deal was a season of chaos with the possibility of a future with championship aspirations.

Now, as long as Jokic is a Nugget—we know at the very least he’ll have Murray by his side. And the two haven’t had a subpar season since the Blue Arrow was a teenager. This is the Nuggets hope at another title, and boy is it better than a lot of team’s—because we already know it can work.