For Jamal Murray, ‘Communication Is The Forefront’ Of Improving Nuggets’ Defense

When starting point guard Jamal Murray described the Denver Nuggets players as “a quiet group” following their 111-124 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers last Wednesday, he was far from the first to do so.

From head coach Michael Malone to veterans Richard Jefferson and Isaiah Thomas – both of whom did a one-year stint with the team and were brought on to in part to provide leadership to Denver’s core of young, developing players – for years the current incarnation of the Nuggets has been known as a soft-spoken, mild-mannered bunch, to the point where the coaching staff has at times had to elevate communication as a point of emphasis in order to encourage players to be more vocal.

Murray’s remark came in response to a question regarding concerns Malone had expressed about the team’s defense in the second half that night.

“We gotta talk more out there,” Murray explained. “There’s no crowd, there’s no fans, so we gotta be more vocal to each other and just talk things out. I feel like we just have a quiet group, and we’re naturally like that.”

Murray has repeatedly brought up the issue of communication on defense throughout Denver’s run of seeding games in the NBA bubble at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

After hard-fought 134-132 double overtime victory last week – in what was a preview of the Nuggets’ first-round playoff matchup against the Utah Jazz which will begin on Monday – Murray praised the team’s defensive communication as a key to the team’s success.

“I think defensively we did a great job of talking things out,” he said. “Even Mike [Nuggets rookie forward Michael Porter Jr.] got better just calling out whether it was a switch or a show.”

Murray’s emphasis on working with Porter on defensive communication highlights both a self-awareness of his growth toward assuming more of a leadership role on the team, and the challenges that the Nuggets have face in developing team chemistry amidst the injuries and delayed arrivals (in some cases due to contracting COVID-19) which have resulted in a slew of new lineups featuring players who have spent little or no game time on the court together.

It seems that simply establishing good communicative habits is just as important a part of what Murray is hoping to help establish as the team’s execution of those principles.

“I’m just trying to be more vocal, just trying to tell [Porter] every time down the court be vocal,” Murray explained. “Tell me what it is even if you’re wrong, just give me something so I don’t get hit by a screen and we can all try to be on the same page.”

“But I think we did a great job of communicating and executing down the stretch.”

Malone, for his part, has had less charitable reviews of Denver’s defensive performance in the bubble.

Following Denver’s loss to the Toronto Raptors in their final seeding game, I asked Malone if he had seen any progress in the area of communication on defense during the team’s time in Orlando.

He did not mince words.

“No, I have not seen much,” Malone replied. “We have the worst defense in the bubble, so we haven’t seen much progress in any area in regards to anything defensive-related – communication, transition, pick-and-roll, three-point, whatever you want to call it.”

While the Nuggets haven’t been terrible across the board on defense, stepping up in some big moments as Murray pointed out, the numbers do back up Malone’s assertions.

A commonly-used metric of a team’s success is the set of “four factors” developed by basketball statistics pioneer and author of Basketball on Paper Dean Oliver, who ten years ago served as the Nuggets’ director of quantitative analysis. The four factors Oliver identified as having the closest correlation with producing wins are effective field goal percentage (eFG%, which accounts for the added value of three-point shots), turnover percentage (TOV%), offensive rebound percentage (ORB%) and free throw rate (FT rate (FT Rate). Teams which perform well in all or most of these categories, and likewise prevent their opponents from doing so, tend to win at higher rates.

Of the 22 teams which each played eight seeding games in the bubble, on the defensive side of the four factors the Nuggets are 20th in opponent eFG% (.584), 16th in opponent TOV% (13.5%), 20th in opponent ORB% (27.5%) and 11th in opponent FT Rate (23.2), according to Cleaning the Glass. Denver has also, of the teams in the bubble, allowed opponents to score the most points per 100 possessions (122.7) giving them, as Malone lamented, the worst defensive rating among them all.

We have a lot of room for improvement on that end,” Malone said, “and I’m hoping come Monday afternoon we can find a way to defend better than we have in these eight seeding games and three scrimmages that we had.”

The Nuggets can perhaps take some encouragement in the fact that prior to the NBA coronavirus suspension, they had proven themselves to be a much better (albeit middle-of-the-pack) defensive team that they have in the bubble, ranking between 12th and 18th in the four factors and ranking 13th in overall defensive efficiency, allowing 109.6 points per 100 possessions.

“We were a good defensive team before the break at not giving up threes, testing every paint shot,” Murray said after the win against Utah. “So just being able to play both (offense and defense) and talk it out, even if we’re wrong, we’ve only got a body in front of somebody and we’ll be straight.”

An even brighter potential silver lining is the fact that from the beginning of the season until the suspension, Denver had the ninth-best defensive rating of 103.1 in “clutch time,” which NBA.com defines as when games are in the final five minutes with a point differential of five points or less. This has helped lift the Nuggets to the sixth-highest clutch winning percentage this season of .644.

When I asked Murray following Denver’s loss to the Clippers if he had seen progress in terms of the team’s defensive communication, he acknowledged it was a work in progress.

“It’s growing pains – can’t just be one guy, can’t be two guys, we need everybody to be on the same page,” Murray replied. “Even if we make a mistake, even if we call it the wrong call, just having a body in front and not giving up layups and open threes.”

With respect to valuing the ball and every possession – mantras repeatedly stressed by Malone – Murray and his teammates are clearly on the same page as the coaching staff.

“It’s gonna be crucial for us… as soon as we start realizing that every possession really counts,” Murray said, while also recognizing that, as mostly young players with an as-yet limited body of postseason work on their resume, there is a great potential for improvement as both he and his teammates learn to communicate better and play together more cohesively.

“I’ve only had one year and two series of playoff experience, and that bodes well,” Murray pointed out. “And that’s helped me mentally gear up for these games and try to come back stronger on defense.”

“So like I said, communication is the forefront of it, and we’ll keep working on it.”