Cubbies2120 wrote:HotRocks34 wrote:KCP was better in Game 4 against LA but they got nothing from Braun or Jackson and Murray took 23 shots to get 22 points and had a 5/4 assist to turnover ratio.
This team is not as good as last year's team, at least not so far in the postseason.
They are missing Brown badly and Murray has to pick it up.
Murray isn't an All Star because trying hard for 1/4 quarters isn't enough.
This was clear to anyone who doesn't have an agenda of trying to prop up Jokic's teammates in order to deflate Jokic's greatness.
Last year was a title won in fashion similar to the 03 Spurs, 11 Mavs, and 95 Rockets. It was a one man show who shouldered the burden of overcoming legend after legend.
What he can't do is win with teammates that play like absolute bums. None of them are great players, but they're at least average at their position. When they play way below average (i.e. Murray) we get results like tonight's game where a 33/14/14 effort is wasted due to boneheaded plays by the supposed "second star".
Let`s not become revisionist here, Jamal Murray is a banged up player that for some reason played a lot of games with small injuries that added up this season, while having some games where he had very high usage as well.
If you look at Jamals injury history, and then this season, look at him moving earlier in his career, both in terms of his jumping, sprinting, change of directions +++ and compare it to now it is day and night in terms of how limited an athlete he is right now. He had one game this season where I was shocked at his burst of speed, and by the next game (which he shouldnt have played because his body doesnt handle the frequency of games) he was looking slow as heck again.
We all know his injury history from previous seasons, now lets add up that they had a long run last season + he has added more fat and muscle for some reason for his joints and connective tissue to carry even more + slow him down and limit his jump height - and lets look at his injury history this season -
quad, hamstring, ankle 1 2 3 4 5, tibia, shin, knee, tibias ?, tibia, ankle, ankle, knee, knee, knee.... in a season where he only played 59 games... like, no one is going to be athletic in a postseason where all of these problems add up, and they mentioned in march he had been diagnosed with shin splints, which does not resolve fast, so he probably still has that + knee problems and god knows what imbalances in other tissues this has caused from compensation and bad/changed/overloaded movement patterns blabla.
TLDR - Jamal Murray refused to rehab his injuries and gradually build himself up for the postseason and is now paying the price. He kept forcing himself back for ESPN games to show off and then reinjure something instead of taking it step by step and having a fresh, athletic body in the postseason and I think its going to cost the Nuggets another ring unless Jokic becomes Thanos.