You wouldn’t call it a plan, but the NBA definitely had an idea of how it wanted the pandemic playoffs to go.
In the league’s perfect world, a Battle of Los Angeles would precede a Clippers/Lakers vs. Milwaukee final. It would get a nice mix of the old mononyms (LeBron/Kawhi) and the new (Giannis). Like a Gatorade commercial come to life.
It hasn’t worked out as the league had hoped (does anything these days?) in large part because of Canada’s latest contribution to the wider sports culture.
A few weeks ago in this space, I argued that soccer player Alphonso Davies had emerged from the COVID-19 weirdness to become Canada’s most globally significant athlete. But it’s in the way of these things that once you’ve made a sweeping generalization that someone else hurries in to ruin it on you.
Jamal Murray was already a basketball star back in August. He played on a fairly decent team (Denver). He’d had a couple of very decent years. And he’d signed a phenomenally decent US$170-million contract.
But however well things were going for him, Murray was not in mononym territory. One of his own teammates – Nikola Jokic – was closer to that designation, not only because Jokic plays differently than just about anybody ever has, but because if you took a photo of him and inserted it in a Tintin comic, he would not seem out of place. If you want to be famous, different is good.
Murray isn’t different. Or wasn’t. Like a lot of top scorers, he’s a one-way-road to the basket. He’s just better at it than most.
But over the past few weeks – in particular his Red Rover-style run through the L.A. Clippers – Murray began to separate himself from the second tier of his peers. He’s now in the LeBron/Kawhi/Giannis postal code.
On the one hand, that’s down to his play. Elevation into the top sporting rank always starts with feats of strength.
Against Utah, Murray scored 50 points in a game. Twice. Against the Clippers, he went blow for blow with Kawhi, and Leonard was the one left wanting.
But stars are not created from statistics. Murray also has that ineffable quality of genuineness. He comes across as profoundly decent and just a little doe-eyed.
When he came near to tears talking about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, people remarked on the young man. A lot of NBA players were having very human reactions to very large moral questions, but Murray’s somehow stood out.
When, after beating Utah in Game 7, he was told the team had to play again in two days, you could not help but be charmed by his reaction.
“We play Thursday? We don’t get two days off?” Murray said, his face collapsing. “Well, that’s a bummer.”
The modern athletic superstar has been programmed more completely than a mainframe. The questions never really change, so it’s easy enough to build an algorithm. Insert question A, get answer B or C. Sometimes D. Rarely E. And never, ever say what you’re actually thinking.
Murray defies this calculus. You actually get the sense that he is a) listening to what is said to him and b) trying his best to respond forthrightly. It’s a diminishing skill among celebrities. Once you stumble across someone who has it, you find yourself falling in love with them a little bit.
When some new star is truly beginning to take off, it starts to feel like everything leads back to them. After Schitt’s Creek won a boatload of Emmys, it was reported that during his travelling high school days, Murray spent two years living in the motel that features in the series. All these little viral moments were starting to sound less like coincidence and more like an episode of The Truman Show.
Should aliens land on Earth in the next week or so, I expect they’ll come out of the shuttle craft and say, “Does anyone here know Jamal Murray? He’s a friend of a friend.”
In this whole crack-the-A-list game, it helps to have a partner to play off. Murray has one par excellence in Jokic, a brilliant and slightly dopey basketball savant.
The two are like Frick and Frack. Murray is small (by NBA standards) and muscled. Jokic is tall (by NBA standards) and soft as cookie dough. When the pair stand side by side, they look like the visual pitch for a buddy comedy.
Beyond the aesthetics, it’s also clear they like each other a lot. This could be the NBA’s premier odd couple for years to come.
Never underestimate how much people are moved by friendship. Collecting friends is a centrepiece of any life well lived, but you don’t often see that reflected (at least, not convincingly) in the context of pro sports.
All you hear in sports is that “this is a business” and these are “warriors.” Business-warriors, I guess.
So when people see a couple of guys who don’t need to be anything more than colleagues, but are great pals anyway, they gravitate toward them.
Murray also had the good sense to know when to leave. Yes, I realize he didn’t want to lose to the Lakers. But in the end, that will do his legend more good than harm. It creates a sense of anticipation for next year. Whenever the NBA starts up again, the Nuggets are going to be everyone’s second favourite team, and Murray is going to be a lot of people’s new favourite player.
Great players are easy. The NBA produces more every year. But global salesmen are hard. It takes a combination of athletic greatness and winning personality that you don’t often find in people who’ve devoted their lives to competition.
Murray has it, that ineffable quality that draws people to him.
It just took a few seasons and one especially bizarre bubble tournament for everyone to realize he did.