In his first game back after missing four games with right knee soreness, Nuggets guard Jamal Murray went down in the fourth quarter against Golden State on Monday with a non-contact left knee injury (video link).
Murray, whose knee buckled as he attempted to take off for a layup, immediately fell to the floor in obvious pain, pounding the court with his hand. He eventually refused the wheelchair that had been brought onto the floor and hopped to the locker room without putting any weight on his left leg (video link).
The Nuggets didn’t have an update on Murray’s status after the game. Head coach Michael Malone indicated that the team is awaiting the results of an MRI, per Nick Friedell and Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.
“No definitive answer right now. We will wait for the imaging and go from there,” Malone said. “Some of the (assistant) coaches said when they watched the replay it looked like he hyperextended it. He just came back (from his right knee injury), he was gone for four days. His (right) knee had been bothering him… just an awful feeling. Keep Jamal in your thoughts and prayers, and hopefully we will get some good news.”
If Murray’s injury is a serious one, it will be a devastating blow to a Nuggets team that has played some of its best basketball of the season in the last month or two. After starting the season with a modest 17-15 record, Denver won 17 of its next 20 games. The team has since dropped its last two and is now 34-20, good for fourth in the West.
Murray has been a key part of that success, averaging a career-best 21.2 PPG this season on .477/.408/.869 shooting in 48 games (35.5 MPG). Last season, he was the Nuggets’ leading scorer in the playoffs with 26.5 PPG on a scorching .505/.453/.897 shooting line in 19 games (39.6 MPG).
“Y’all know what he means to us, he’s ‘the dude’ — Nikola and Jamal,” Michael Porter Jr. said of Murray, according to Friedell and Youngmisuk. “They brought this team to new heights. You talk about their closing all the time. We need Jamal … but we are more worried about his well-being right now, how he is individually than the team. The team right now is an afterthought.”
We should learn more about Murray’s injury at some point today.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
No!
ACL tear?
Hopefully not — but even if it’s hyperextended it’s a huge blow. This team was looking like a contender after the addition of Gordon
This is why some players will handle sore muscles, tissue very carefully. For all the bravado about playing through pain, playing through weakened damaged body tissues can more likely lead to more severe damage. Nobody has a crystal ball to say if you ignore the pain your body has, you will in all likelihood be looking at a more catastrophic injury as a result of trying to do more with less tools available to you to handle stress on your body safely.
But this is why sports medicine needs to guide more conversations for athletes on when to play or rest and cut the tough guy crap.
I didn’t see in the article where it said that’s what Murray did.
Well, we don’t know the severity of the injury yet, although I agree that it doesn’t look good, and especially given that he was out with right knee soreness prior to this game.
Having said that, from a league standpoint this argument is kind of naive. If players – especially star guys like Murray – are cleared to play then from a business standpoint they should be playing.
Load management is great for players in the short term, but over the long term if every all star takes the Kawhi route and plays 70% (or less) of the season, then it should be expected that fans will tune out/not attend more and more games, which hurts the league’s bottom line, which ultimately hurts the players.
It hurts even more when players are out for long extended absences would be easy counter argument. Not every injury is the same age I was speaking more generally to the specifics of Murray’s case which we don’t know very much about (nor do we have great knowledge of any pro athlete).
Yet nobody will know for certain how much rest will always be needed, nor when a player is safe to resume activity. But there are professionals who are focused well studied and more knowledgable than your average person or team professional to make such decisions. Everyone will care about track record and avoiding major surgeries but in the short view anyone who wants to shrug it off will say that player was probably never in danger any way.
For Kawhi, many are eager for the day he has a major injury to say the plan for him to rest was foolhardy. But if he doesn’t have that injury, the argument improves that the plan was sound. Fans will care that the big stars are there for when it matters most and survive just fine in the intermediate. The business guys will be happy if the marketing tools are humming as the fans are consistently excited. The sport will be richer, not poorer if it had a strategy to avoid major injury.
Indeed—yet an easy enough counter to that counter would be that during the Jordan-era star players routinely played 40+mpg on average, rarely took random rest games, and the league was at its apex in terms of popularity.
I don’t think either of us have the hard data, but anecdotally it *does* seem like there are more serious injuries to star players now than in the 80s/90s/00s.
Maybe it’s the nature of the how the game is played now compared to earlier eras, but it seems like—if anything—major injuries should be decreasing compared to previous eras, given that teams now invest significantly more money in research and staffing to ensure players stay healthy.
In which case maybe the schedule needs to be adjusted, maybe there needs to be a series of rule changes to make the game safer, maybe the season just needs to be extended over a longer period—or maybe the money being invested for player health isn’t being used in the right ways (too many unnecessary interventions, too many “cutting edge” techniques that may have unintended side effects, etc). I’m not sure.
Or maybe my anecdotal data is wrong and there actually aren’t any more injuries now than in the Jordan-era.
But in either case it doesn’t seem like the best answer is to have players routinely sit games to manage their workloads. If the way the game is played now is too extremity-intensive and injuries are more likely during an 82 gm schedule, then I think the rules or schedule should be adjusted.
But if it’s not then there’s really no reason why Jordan, Barkley, Ewing, et al could give fans 40+ mpg, almost every game, and players today can’t.
My belief in the big difference between the eras can have a lot to do with the training. Guys are pursuing more rigorous training and diet regimes as they want to push the limit of what their body can do on the court, which is then driving greater exertion during games in terms of stress as they have to compete with guys who are driving harder than ever.
Guys used to train more for endurance if anything and it wasn’t the efficient systems we have today. We have greater athletes than ever, but not necessarily the caution about pushing past the breaking point for injury, especially major injury. My sense is the minor injuries are at no greater rate now than before, probably less. Guys are in better shape now generally would be the main factor. There used to be major injuries before too, but you may not remember them as well because the rehabilitation to bring those guys back has improved a lot as well. (out of sight, out of mind)
Simply put, your best athletes, players, are quite the workhorses pushing their workouts to be the best, pushing themselves through games and between games in many but not all cases. There is a danger in that and older guys will get wiser out of necessity how to pull back that drive to push forward. May there be help for them if they are using substances of any sort as a way to push past the sense when they need to slow down.
And if you were to say the solution is simple, they play all the games but don’t train so much..yes, that would move towards a possible remedy but it is difficult to tell athletes who train to be the best they can be, seeking the biggest wins, that instead they should relax on that and maybe not be the best and maybe not win because it’s more important they turn up for every game of the season and avoid injury.
I am not trying to suggest there is a clear solution because it is difficult and there are many wiser people trying their best to navigate it. But these are the major factors that make the modern problem what it is.
For sure. Another thing we haven’t mentioned I just thought of – that I’ve heard mentioned elsewhere – is the AAU circuit, that a lot of these players today start playing year-round before they’re even teens, which definitely was not the case in Jordan’s era.
It could simply be that guys have just played so many games between AAU, high school, camps, etc – that by the time they even hit the league, no matter what training they do, injuries are going to be more prevalent. That it’s just a matter of how many miles a person’s joints can endure. But again – who knows for sure?
Either way, good talk, man.
Yes, the history is important and when you talk about prescribing guys rest and having them sit games in the season, it’s because the damage is already done. The wear is on the tissues there already and the choice is to watch something rupture by ‘playing through it’ or constantly monitor the condition of all relevant muscle and ligament systems so that you keep everything stable.
Some things are not completely broken yet but can become stronger if you maintain them well before something does go. If you ignore the signs of strain and don’t care about anything more than the next game and the next big contract you end up in major surgery. These things happened in ages past but guys would see their careers end, or they never made enough of a name for themselves, and there were few options for them medically to come back. Everyone moved on and their stories were forgotten, largely.
Guys are training more, at earlier ages. Guys like Thompson or Murray may likely have trained more to jump quicker, higher, farther than the OG jumpman himself, MJ, at the same respective stage of their careers. They started earlier, pushed harder, hit the gym far more (I can only presume) even if they weren’t more celebrated or successful than he. And what that can do to their knees? You strive too hard, you fall too hard is the unfortunate truth. Two different guys can survive the same amount of mileage differently and a lot can have to do with specifics of how they go about doing it.
Don’t dismiss the need guys have for rest, even if it is games. Sports are getting wiser to backing off practice time. Previous eras took much more relaxed approaches to practice, especially offseason training. But guys want to win, earn those fatter contracts nobody was dreaming on 30 years ago. The carrots are bigger, the training programs are bigger, the injury risks are bigger. It’s just a dangerous system producing these catastrophes, man. Nice work if you can get it though.
Durant sat out forever (w GSW) and came back and still got re-injured.
Been sitting out again and still has hamstring problems. That’s why it’s called “Science”, because it’s all educated GUESSING.
Hopefully Murray’s injury isn’t as serious as it looked. These kids are taking a beating. This era of nba players are a product of when AAU exploded and these guys have been playing non-stop since 4th grade. Could wear and tear be hitting them this early in their careers?
Curry is putting the worst team ever on his back to storm through the playoffs.
No one is safe, joker mode = activated. Be afraid, be very afraid…(and if youre a GSW fan, be afraid of the idiot SocKERRtes who has to “manage his minutes” for absolutely no reason and give certified g-leaguer Nico Mannion playing time – if Kerr plays Steph 40 mins a game they will not lose from here on out, thats on god).
Currys minutes aren’t regular minutes. He moves so much more than anyone else that you can’t play him 40 minutes unless you want him to end up like Murray. We aren’t gonna win the chip this year with our roster so depleted so just chill bruh and enjoy the chef curry show
Did you watch the game last night? Where they beat down “MVP” Jokic and the loaded Nuggets with that depleted roster? Have some confidence in Curry, man. We are cookin and yes, we might not go all the way, but Curry is going to put this team on his back and see just how far he can get them.
Curry also doesn’t move on every play. He’s also in the best shape, fitness-wise than anyone in the league. There’s no reason why he has to sit so long. They can also draw up plays where he shoots early.
Lol come to a Nuggets article to celebrate Curry playing good basketball for a bad team.
How desperate are you?
I celebrate Curry being good on every thread, baby boy. Desperate? lol for what? Not the right word there, son. Curry COOKED the Murray’s Nuggets last night, its on topic. But you don’t even watch the games, so what does it matter.
Mute button coming soon….
Desperate…for attention. It was the right word. Don’t they have dictionaries on bandwagons?
2018 Cavs was a worse team
Socrates knows what he’s doing. If he played Steph 40 minutes every single game the former MVP would end up on the sidelines next to his splash brother. Then both of them would be rehabbing at the start of next season. Meanwhile their team would look just like it did last year and dig themselves into such a big hole that even getting both of them back at some point wouldn’t be enough for the team to return to the playoffs for the first time since 2019.
This is tough. They were really becoming a threat in the West with Gordon. I’ll be keeping an eye for his results today.
Gordon is a helpful add but they definitely count on Murray to give them a leg up
Nuggets are really going to need Austin Rivers now.
Would you wish Rivers onto the Raptors? (PER: 10)