Jamal Murray explodes in fourth as Nuggets go wire to wire on Grizzlies

Jamal Murray scored 30 points, 22 of them in the final 13 minutes of the game, and the Nuggets held off the Memphis Grizzlies 123-118 on Wednesday night

BY JAKE SHAPIRO

Nov 11, 2026, 8:50 PM

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Two nights after Jamal Murray’s 38 points went to waste in Houston, the Denver Nuggets gave him some help.

Murray scored 30 points, 22 of them in the final 13 minutes of the game, and the Nuggets held off the Memphis Grizzlies 123-118 on Wednesday night at FedExForum. It was Murray’s fifth 30-point game of the season. Denver (6-4) never trailed and is 2-1 on its four-game road trip.

“Jamal’s been our most consistent player,” coach David Adelman said. “Bottom line, I’d say probably on both ends, but especially offensively, he’s carried us. … He’s a stud.”

After Monday’s loss, Adelman said that two players doing most of the scoring “is not going to win a game.” This time, Cameron Johnson scored 23 points on 9-of-15 shooting — getting two big buckets to go down the stretch — and Nikola Jokic had 27 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists. Johnson, Christian Braun and Aaron Gordon combined for 44 points. In Houston, those three scored 15.

“He’s got to let it go,” Adelman said of Johnson. “Nine for 15 tonight. I’ll take six for 15.”

The Nuggets set the tone early. They assisted on 13 of their 15 first-quarter field goals and led 35-24 after one. They finished with 34 assists and six turnovers against one of the league’s most aggressive defenses.

“Only six turnovers for two points is outrageous against this team,” Adelman said. “I didn’t feel like at any timeout I had to say, just play, like just hoop. I thought they were just hooping out there. Open man wins.”

Murray told the Nuggets’ TV broadcast that the fast start was “all we can ask for.”

Denver kept the red-hot Ty Jerome scoreless until 9:55 remained in the second quarter. A bench-heavy group pushed the lead to 42-24. Then the bench stalled, Memphis hit three 3-pointers, and the lead was down to 47-39 when Jokic checked back in. Denver went into halftime up 65-52.

The third quarter got ugly. Murray picked up his fourth foul with 10:46 left and went to the bench. Memphis kept driving straight to the rim, went 10 of 11 from the free-throw line in the quarter and cut the lead to 87-86 with 1:21 left.

“There was so many times in the third quarter, it was just straight-line drives,” Adelman said. “We have to shore that up. It’s gotten better since the first week, but it’s not good enough.”

When the Nuggets saw that Jokic had a mismatch and went to him, they scored. When they ran anything else, they mostly didn’t.

Then Murray came back, and the game changed.

He buried a 29-foot 3-pointer with 35.5 seconds left in the third, hit a fadeaway just before the buzzer and opened the fourth with a step-back. In less than seven minutes of game time, he scored 20 points, capped by a step-back 3 that made it 113-104. He finished with 22 of Denver’s last 38 points on 12-of-19 shooting, with eight assists and one turnover.

He was just as good on the other end. He blocked Jerami Grant and turned it into a fast-break layup. Then he blocked Jaylen Wells to force a shot-clock violation.

“I just know when I miss or make, I just wanted to be aggressive and live with the results,” Murray said.

“Man, he was on one tonight,” Adelman said. “He’s an All-Star. He’s an all-time player.”

Memphis made one last push. The Grizzlies outrebounded Denver 25-17 after halftime. Their bench outscored Denver’s 44-22. Jerome scored 11 of his 22 points in the fourth, and Cameron Boozer’s hook cut the lead to 113-111 with 4:01 left.

Johnson answered. He grabbed an offensive rebound off a Jokic miss and scored on a drive. Then, after Denver won a challenge that gave Wells an offensive foul, he buried a Jokic kickout 3 with 1:01 left to make it 120-113.

“He hit the big 3 there to kind of close it out,” Adelman said.

Murray called Monday’s loss “more of a fluke,” blaming the travel, the lack of sleep and “no food.”

“You look compared to today, and the energy, the effort, the will, the passion is all there from everybody,” he said.

Ten games in, Murray is easily the Nuggets’ MVP. On Wednesday, he finally got enough help to turn another big night into the team’s best win of the season yet.