ABU DHABI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates — This isn’t just Jamal Mur­ray cast­ing aside ques­tions about his health and down­play­ing his recent injuries.

In fact, as if he had a defin­i­tive dis­play of ath­leti­cism for the media planned to per­fec­tion, he pounced at the rim Fri­day for a con­test­ed slam dunk — moments after the doors had been opened allow­ing a throng of reporters to watch the last 30 min­utes of Denver’s practice.

Point tak­en.

“I feel good,” a curt Mur­ray said dur­ing the team’s media day at Ball Are­na, reject­ing any notion that he was deal­ing with lin­ger­ing injuries as train­ing camp began.

One week lat­er, and on the oppo­site side of the globe, his emphat­ic dunk sup­plied some mean­ing­ful evi­dence. Then his coach vouched for him.

“Knock on wood,” Michael Mal­one told reporters from The Den­ver Post and Alti­tude Sports in Abu Dhabi. “I have seen a healthy Jamal Mur­ray. I’ve seen a guy that, as you point­ed to that play, (has been) explo­sive. Mak­ing plays. And that’s always a micro-goal of any game that you go into dur­ing the pre­sea­son, is mak­ing sure you have play­er health.”

The dunk isn’t the only exam­ple. In lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to see Mur­ray in prac­tice set­tings, his explo­sive­ness and abil­i­ty to cre­ate sep­a­ra­tion off the drib­ble have stood out. The Nuggets scrim­maged Mon­day morn­ing (and into the after­noon) at Ball Are­na to wrap up their last prac­tice before fly­ing to the Mid­dle East. When the last of the scrim­mages went to over­time, Mur­ray stepped up. He made two clutch midrange shots in the last 90 sec­onds, includ­ing one with two sec­onds left to force a tie. (The game end­ed with that result.)

If he is still nurs­ing any injuries at this point, he at min­i­mum can still locate his tal­ent for over­com­ing them when a game is on the line. The point guard who made those shots was, at worst, the ver­sion of Mur­ray from the Lak­ers series — not the Tim­ber­wolves one.

“You read reports from around the league and you see dif­fer­ent play­ers hav­ing some of those soft tis­sue injuries, which can linger for a long time,” Mal­one said. “Like Pey­ton Wat­son (ham­string) is deal­ing with right now. But right now it appears to me that Jamal is in a real­ly good place men­tal­ly (and) phys­i­cal­ly. And I know that bodes well for us.”

Can all that change in an instant? Of course it can, for Mur­ray or any­body else. But the Nuggets felt this sum­mer that his upside was still worth bet­ting on with a max con­tract, even after that upside was most­ly absent from the NBA play­offs and Olympics.

Mur­ray had a most­ly qui­et night in Denver’s first pre­sea­son game at Eti­had Are­na, but he wasn’t try­ing to do much offen­sive­ly. He made a cor­ner 3‑pointer off the catch dur­ing his abbre­vi­at­ed min­utes, an encour­ag­ing sign after shoot­ing poor­ly at the Olympics.

More impor­tant­ly, he felt con­fi­dent enough — and healthy enough — to dive after a loose ball dur­ing the mean­ing­less exhi­bi­tion. That might’ve been even more encour­ag­ing than the dunk.

Malone doubles down on lack of stagger

Mal­one, unprompt­ed, addressed crit­ics of his per­ceived over-reliance on one pre­cise line­up while speak­ing with local media out­side the Nuggets lock­er room.

Mal­one, who’s enter­ing his 10th sea­son as Denver’s coach, stag­gered his first and sec­ond units less fre­quent­ly than oth­er coach­es last sea­son. The Nuggets lost one of their starters from that line­up, Ken­tavi­ous Cald­well-Pope, in free agency this offseason.

The loss leaves Den­ver try­ing to estab­lish renewed cohe­sion with­in the line­up as a replace­ment starter becomes nec­es­sary. (Chris­t­ian Braun han­dled that role Fri­day.)

“There is no KCP,” Mal­one said. “So we’ll have dif­fer­ent guys out there with our start­ing unit, get­ting min­utes with them, and those min­utes are impor­tant because the last two years, we’ve had the best start­ing unit in the NBA. Peo­ple say, ‘Why do you play your starters so much togeth­er?’ Because they’re real­ly good.”

The line­up includ­ing Cald­well-Pope, Mur­ray, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gor­don and Niko­la Jokic played 958 min­utes togeth­er dur­ing the 2023–24 reg­u­lar sea­son. No oth­er five-man line­up in the NBA played 800 min­utes together.

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