Jamal Murray accomplishes clutch stat not even attained by Michael Jordan
Lakers fans held their breath Monday night when Jamal Murray came off a Nikola Jokic screen and rose for a shot with less than four seconds left. The wounds they sustained from Murray snatching their hearts a week ago — with his Game 2 buzzer-beater — were all too fresh.
They needed Murray to miss the shot to force overtime. They needed him to show them mercy.
Instead, the Nuggets star would reopen the wound and pour salt into it.
The Nuggets star's second dagger in the same series put him in an exclusive club that even clutch icons such as Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Kobe Bryant are not members of.
In the play-by-play era, the only player who came close to Murray's feat was LeBron James, who made two clutch baskets for the Cavaliers in the first round of the 2006 playoffs against the Wizards. James made a go-ahead basket with 5.7 seconds left in Game 3 and drained another buzzer-beater with 0.9 seconds left in Game 5. However, James narrowly missed the exclusive Murray club since his first buzzer-beater was 0.7 seconds over the 5-second mark. Semantics? Perhaps.
After his second dagger in a week, Murray was asked to pick between the two.
"This one was a little better," he said, admitting that the series clincher meant more.
We're witnessing the birth of a modern-day playoff icon.
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