Jamal Mur­ray was respon­si­ble for the four most impor­tant shots of the Nuggets’ first-round series. He was also respon­si­ble for a behind-the-scenes con­ver­sa­tion more con­se­quen­tial than any of those shots.

Pey­ton Wat­son encoun­tered the after­math by acci­dent. “I think it was almost per­fect tim­ing,” he said in the lock­er room after Denver’s 108–106 Game 5 win to elim­i­nate the Los Ange­les Lak­ers. “But when I was back there get­ting ready for the game, just com­ing out of the train­ing room, I saw Jamal right as he was leav­ing of Coach’s office. And I could tell — like, his eyes were even watering.”

Mur­ray was leav­ing Michael Malone’s office after argu­ing his way onto the floor. In a pregame meet­ing that Mal­one described as “an emo­tion­al one,” Mur­ray hashed out his injury sta­tus with the head coach and the team VP of sports med­i­cine, Steve Short.

Need­less to say, Mur­ray emerged tri­umphant, if teary-eyed. The night end­ed with his sec­ond game-win­ning shot of the series, a lean­ing pull-up jumper with 3.6 sec­onds left to knock out his hero, LeBron James, for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive season.

Mur­ray, who scored 32 to put the fin­ish­ing touch­es on an unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly uneven series, approached Mal­one after it was over.

“I’m glad I played because I don’t know if we win if I don’t play tonight,” Mal­one recalled Mur­ray telling him. The coach respond­ed, “Well that’s the under­state­ment of the year.”

Calf injuries can be noto­ri­ous­ly dan­ger­ous due to the risk of dam­ag­ing the Achilles ten­don. So Murray’s left calf strain, which occurred in Game 4, was enough to keep all of Den­ver hold­ing its col­lec­tive breath Mon­day night when Mur­ray was announced as avail­able. He went through an abbre­vi­at­ed warm-up rou­tine with a heavy wrap on his left leg.

“I came a lit­tle ear­li­er today just to see if I was gonna be able to go. And I felt like I could,” Mur­ray said. “And they just didn’t want me to risk it. They told me no. They told me no. And I didn’t say no. I just didn’t want to leave my team­mates out there. We’ve been bat­tling all sea­son. Everybody’s hurt at some point. Everybody’s going through some­thing. And I just wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I wasn’t about to play this game. … I’m just glad they lis­tened to me. They lis­tened to me lis­ten­ing to my body.”

His part­ner in crime, Niko­la Jokic, offered lev­i­ty: “He was fak­ing it,” the two-time MVP said.

About those four shots: Before Murray’s Game 2 buzzer beat­er, he made a less mem­o­rable but equal­ly dif­fi­cult game-tying 20-foot­er with 30 sec­onds remain­ing. And in Game 5, before stick­ing the dag­ger back in Lak­er hearts, he cashed an open 3‑pointer with 1:06 left and the Nuggets trail­ing by one.

When James evened the score with a pair of free throws, Mal­one abstained from call­ing a time­out — same as Game 2 exact­ly one week ear­li­er in the same build­ing. Instead, Mur­ray walked the ball up slow­ly, glanc­ing over at Mal­one on the sideline.

Maybe things got heat­ed between them ear­li­er. But it didn’t mat­ter now, in a famil­iar sit­u­a­tion. They coa­lesced with­out need­ing to stop the game for a com­mer­cial break. Then Mur­ray and Jokic exe­cut­ed their two-man game with the usu­al synergy.

“It’s basi­cal­ly a time­out,” Mur­ray said. “I think we had two time­outs and they didn’t have any. So when I looked at Coach, we called the play. I looked back. I asked him if we should go right away. I think it was only a two- or three-sec­ond dif­fer­ence, maybe four. And we knew what we were going to get to. We were going to get the last shot. That was the time­out right there. I’m an exten­sion of him out there. So I was able to relay the mes­sage. Every­body got to their spots. I got to mine.”

As for the shot itself, cou­pled with the Game 2 win­ner: “Those are shots that you dream of as a lit­tle kid,” Mur­ray said. “You prac­tice in the back­yard. At the playground.”

He was then remind­ed of anoth­er child­hood mem­o­ry, one that sig­ni­fies why these play­off matchups with the Lak­ers have been so sen­ti­men­tal to Mur­ray. James has his own impres­sive résumé of post­sea­son game-win­ners, includ­ing a catch-and-shoot three to come from behind against Orlan­do in 2009. Mur­ray was watch­ing that one while wear­ing a LeBron jersey.

“I just remem­ber talk­ing to my dad — I’m a lit­tle kid, so I don’t know that much. And I’m like, ‘There’s no way they’re gonna win. There’s no way they’re gonna win.’ I just remem­ber being out of breath, like I just got punched in the gut,” Mur­ray said, grinning.

“I didn’t know how to react. He’s been one of my favorite play­ers. … Just a plea­sure to go against him, man. He makes you think dur­ing the game. He’s still a phys­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant guy out there, but he makes you think the game and the reads and the passes.”

The appre­hen­sion regard­ing Murray’s health isn’t resolved. He had to play Game 5 in a brace. Calf strains don’t dis­ap­pear overnight. But he has a knack for sup­ply­ing his most mem­o­rable moments in front of the least like­ly backdrops.

Now the Nuggets will have four days off to get him clos­er to 100% before the Tim­ber­wolves arrive. If Den­ver hadn’t closed out the first round Mon­day, the gam­ble would have been a waste.

“That was kind of the ques­tion,” Mal­one said. “Does Jamal sit tonight and you give him more days to rest up? Or do you kind of put all your chips in the mid­dle of the table and say, ‘Look, we’re not going back to LA?’”

All’s well that ends well, for now. Mal­one called Mur­ray “one tough cook­ie.” Wat­son went home with a dif­fer­ent impres­sion after see­ing his start­ing point guard leav­ing Malone’s office.

“I think he was try­ing so hard to con­vince the train­ing staff and the coach­es that he was ready to play and that this was his moment, and there’s noth­ing that he cares about more than this,” Wat­son said. “So it’s some­thing that’s amaz­ing to see. … It means a lot to see him like that and be vulnerable.”

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