Head bowed, mind rac­ing, Jamal Mur­ray crouched on a ramp for near­ly a minute late Sun­day night before gath­er­ing him­self and head­ing for the lock­er room.

The Nuggets star had just poured every ounce of ener­gy he had into a sea­son-sav­ing 50-point per­for­mance against Utah, then tore open a 400-year-old wound by answer­ing ques­tions about Black lives lost.

When Mur­ray got back to the vic­to­ri­ous lock­er room, one that had picked itself up after a 3–1 deficit to force Tuesday’s win-or-go-home Game 7, he had a text mes­sage wait­ing for him. It was a screen­shot of him­self, crouched, pro­cess­ing every­thing he’d just authored.

“I sent him the pic­ture, and just ‘Wow, can’t tell you how proud I am of you,’” Ken­tucky coach John Cali­pari told The Den­ver Post on Monday.

Mur­ray, who played for Cali­pari dur­ing his lone col­lege sea­son in 2015–16, hit him right back.

“I imag­ine why he did what he did was try­ing to get his mind togeth­er,” Cali­pari said. “Like, what has just hap­pened? Let me tell you. When they gave him a max con­tract (last sum­mer), he calls me and said, ‘I got a max deal. Can you believe it?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I can believe it. You should’ve got­ten a max deal.’ So, he’s one of those kinds. They’re young men, they’re try­ing to fig­ure out, ‘Who the hell am I?’”

Cali­pari ed in aston­ish­ment as his for­mer guard launched his “blue arrows” from well beyond the 3‑point line Sun­day, sink­ing nine. Mur­ray has shat­tered Denver’s pre­vi­ous record of 19 3‑pointers in a play­off series, con­nect­ing on 31 through six games. His 204 points in this series? Also a fran­chise record.

If he wasn’t aware of it while his mind dashed between the emo­tions of the Game 6 win, to talk­ing about the vio­lent deaths of George Floyd and Bre­on­na Tay­lor, you can bet he’s aware of the record now.

“I’m just proud,” Cali­pari said, steal­ing the same adjec­tive Nuggets coach Michael Mal­one used in the after­math. “It’s fun­ny, he knows what I do. He had 92 (points) in two games, so I said, ‘Damn, you had 82 in two games.’ And he’ll hit me right back and say ‘Coach, I had 92.’”

Cali­pari knows the 23-year-old from Kitch­en­er, Ontario, is wired dif­fer­ent­ly than most. He cred­its Murray’s par­ents, Roger and Sylvia, for not cod­dling their son. As Cali­pari recalled, Mur­ray didn’t have ameni­ties like a phone, TV or the inter­net as a kid.

“That’s not how he grew up,” he said. “Jamal had to prove him­self every­where he’s been, which means you bet­ter be tough. … His men­tal tough­ness is com­ing from like, ‘Respect what I am, who I am, how I am.’”

And yet even Cali­pari saw some­thing in the vis­cer­al emo­tion Mur­ray dis­played in his postgame inter­view, where he revealed what and who he was play­ing for. First, Cali­pari said it was appar­ent to him how much the “racial strife” had affect­ed Mur­ray, and sec­ond­ly, he thought the NBA’s “bub­ble” exper­i­ment was get­ting to him.

Obvi­ous­ly not enough to impede his his­toric run of play, but enough to burst open a seam welling inside.

“I got emo­tion­al ing him get emo­tion­al,” Cali­pari said.

It’s here that Cali­pari thinks back to the ear-to-ear smile Mur­ray had on a dai­ly basis while at Ken­tucky and reflects on how much he miss­es coach­ing him.

“If I walked in and I was think­ing about some­thing or what­ev­er, he’d say, ‘Coach!’ and I’d look at him, and he’d point to his smile,” Cali­pari recalled. “In oth­er words smile. We’re hav­ing fun here.”

But hid­den behind that smile was a dogged stub­born­ness in Murray’s game that Cali­pari remem­bers well. Cali­pari recalled a prac­tice where Mur­ray let loose a fad­ing, falling left-hand­ed hook shot that banked hard off the glass and missed.

“I’m like, ‘You’re kid­ding me, right?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You can’t take a shot like that.’” Cali­pari said, his voice get­ting ani­mat­ed. “He’s like, ‘That’s a good shot. I can make that shot.’”

Same thing when Mur­ray entered the NBA. Though Cali­pari knew he was an elite prospect who had aver­aged 20 points per game as a fresh­man and showed a pen­chant for play­mak­ing and crash­ing the glass, he still had con­cerns about his 3‑point shoot­ing. Cali­pari wor­ried about his low release point, that Mur­ray couldn’t let his arrows fly.

“I thought, ‘He’s going to strug­gle to get that off,’” he said. “No, that was wrong … Oh, he gets them off now. But he’s (shoot­ing) left and right and hooks and run­ners and bank shots and bang a three and not be afraid. It’s not that you’ll shoot them. You can’t be afraid to miss them. That’s why they go.”

Mur­ray is shoot­ing 57% from 3‑point range in the post­sea­son, the bas­ket seem­ing­ly as big as the Mag­ic King­dom itself. It was the ruth­less effi­cien­cy – Mur­ray was 17-for-24 with 50 points in Game 6 – that had Cali­pari telling one of his elite prospects Mon­day the dif­fer­ence between Mur­ray at Ken­tucky and the refined NBA star he’s becoming.

“How good can he be?” Cali­pari said. “We don’t know yet, because what he’s done is he’s begin­ning to mas­ter his craft. … There’s not one shot that he shoots that he thinks is a bad shot. If he gets it off, it was a good shot. That’s what Jamal is.”

Murray’s leg­endary per­for­mance has placed him along­side names like Jor­dan, Iver­son and West in terms of post­sea­son play. His ridicu­lous run of scor­ing will be for­ev­er etched in Nuggets lore regard­less of what hap­pens Tues­day night. But what’s scary, and why Cali­pari con­sid­ers the Nuggets so lucky, is Mur­ray will be respon­si­ble for wher­ev­er his career goes from here. Future All-Star? All-NBA player?

By now, it’s hard to bet against the 23-year-old who, through his words and play, has risen above the heartache of the past week.

“He’s very con­fi­dent in who he is and what he is,” Cali­pari said. “You’re not tak­ing his con­fi­dence away. Here’s what I say: When you build that, and you have to fight for it, and you work for that, no one takes it away except your­self. You can take it away from you, but no one else can. And in his mind, he’s like, ‘You’re not tak­ing this away.’ Some­one says you can’t do this, or this or that, he laughs. ‘You’re out of your mind.’ That’s what he’d say.”