Jamal Murray once again stepped onto the stage of the Western finals. The last time was in the Orlando rematch Park in 2020-964 days have passed.
Everyone remembered the performance of “bubble Murray”. In 19 games, he averaged 26.5 points, breaking all expectations: he scored 20 points in the fourth quarter of jazz G1 and overtime in the first round; g4 scored 50 points, 11 rebounds and 7 assists, and created history together with 51-point Mitchell. Facing the 1-3 lag, he scored 42 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists in G5; G6 scored 50 points again, 9 out of 12 in three points, then the victory of G7.
In the second round, he hit the Clippers and fought again until G7. Murray scored 40 points, leading the Nuggets to win two rounds and Rob seven to create history. This defender, who has never been a star, played at the stage of phenomenon in the playoffs, which caught the whole league a little off guard.
Three years passed quickly. This year’s East-West finals are exactly the same as 2020. Everything has changed and everything seems to have not changed. The four teams all responded to the doubts about “bubble water injection” in their own ways, but for Murray, expectations and burdens were heavy.
Before the start of the playoffs in 2021, he suffered a bolt from the blue of the left knee and drew a temporary rest for his career. In three years, he had seen mountains and traveled through the valley.
However, when we stretch the timeline and trace back the long basketball life that Murray started at the age of three, the heaviness seems not so terrible anymore.
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One of Murray’s earliest memories of basketball was watching Vance Carter win the dunk contest when he was three years old. The childhood he spent in Canada can be called an alien.
When he was still in his infancy, he was pushed to the court by his father and accepted the influence of basketball culture. Roger Murray is an immigrant from Jamaica, and his wife Sylvia is from Syria. After Canada made a family, especially after having children, Roger made an extraordinary sacrifice: He integrated himself into and devoted himself to his son’s growth. A father who did everything himself and worried about all the problems on the chicken doll is rare in Canada and even more rare in NBA.
“No matter what my son wants to do in the future, I will help him do his best.” Roger said. “It happens that he loves basketball.”
“I stopped my life for this child. I promised him that he must be taught well so that he can get the chance to enter the university through basketball. Therefore, we disassembled everything in this journey in detail, including both spirit and body, and psychology.”
As a fanatical Bruce Lee fan, Roger fully implemented Bruce Lee’s spirit into the way of being a father. At the beginning of Murray’s muddling basketball, Roger introduced him into the world of “Kung Fu”, which was not only to strengthen his body, but also to hone his will, according to Roger, it is to practice “Spiritual Kung Fu”-meditation.
Murray once wrote in his self-report that his first contact with kung fu film was at the age of seven, and his father took him to watch a Shao films “Five Poisons” produced in 1978. “It was not until a long time later that I found that most people around me would not talk about Shaolin Temple and Dragon at the dinner table,” Murray said.
What Roger especially worships Bruce Lee is that in the face of a higher, stronger and stronger opponent, Bruce Lee never seems to flinch, “I wonder why he can be so tough on Earth.”
In Bruce Lee, the father and son observed not only his footsteps, balance and speed of attack, but also his spiritual game with his opponent, imitating the Buddha statue as an extremely patient Hunter. More importantly, Bruce Lee made them understand that self-discipline can make a person go far beyond his physical limit, which may be the best footnote of Murray’s NBA career.
How to cultivate self-discipline and concentration?
At first Murray could still watch kung fu movies or live games at home, but Roger still cut off cable TV after several trade-offs. Meanwhile, Murray never had a mobile phone before he went to college, which was unimaginable for a 97-year-old man. (The only reason why Murray registered Twitter later was that there were too many counterfeit accounts. Recently, he lost the authentication mark because he didn’t pay.)
On the court, it is endless training and sparring. Fengshui ball, push-ups and round trips on snow slopes are common in frozen venues.
There are two kinds of shooting training that father and son are keen on. One is to hit free throws in a row. The earliest goal (about seven years old) is to score 30 goals in a row every day. It sounds difficult, but most of the time, after more than a dozen consecutive entries, Murray’s mood began to gambol, his heart began to accelerate, and his mind was no longer concentrated. Throw one, start again. Until High School, Murray’s highest consecutive free throw hit 270 goals.
Another kind of training is shooting with eyes closed-just like kung fu masters who have changed the world in movies. Murray said that when he was in high school, he had taken the blindfold action as a common occurrence. “Even if my father interfered nearby, it was useless. I could see rim clearly when I closed my eyes.”
Before every match, Murray used to take a bath to “purify the body” first, then find a quiet corner to start meditation. Until now, he can control the number of heartbeats per minute to about 30 to 40 times in the state of meditation. Only when he is used to being calm can he stay in danger.
“He reminds me of Phil Jackson, who is a Zen master in NBA,” said the coach who once coached Murray in Canada’s most famous AAU team. “In the competition, he can be detached from everyone from beginning to end and enter a completely different field alone.”
Murray began to fight against high school and even college players at the age of 13, and his talent blossomed rapidly, at the age of 17, he won the MVP of Nike basketball summit (the highest 30-point world team defeated the US team with Ingram and Jay Brown), at the Pan American Games, Canada was eliminated from the United States and finally won the championship.
When training in the national team, he must practice for two hours alone every day. The coach confiscated his sneakers for fear that he could not bear it. As a result, when he returned to the stadium, the child was still practicing bare feet.
So far, Roger’s career was half successful. American basketball schools competed to send a scholarship invitation to Murray. He finally chose Kentucky and Cali pari, which created the school history with an average of 20 points in the freshman season, he also cast a three-point hit rate of 40%, which can be said to have long been ready for NBA-level confrontation.
But the funny thing is that after the debut of the Nuggets, this meditation master, who has always been accustomed to “running with heavy load”, did not get one point in the first four games of his career, and lost all the first 17 shots. The wall was so solid that I couldn’t see rim when I opened my eyes.
Of course, this is a joke. In fact, Murray’s ability to adjust and adapt and psychological quality far exceed that of ordinary newcomers. To some extent, he is really a little bit of Bruce Lee’s indomitable strength, on the first playoff trip, he handed over the transcript with an average score of 20 points.
He also brought his attitude of hard work to NBA. He had been in the stadium until 2 a.m. for training three points, and slept directly in the team’s morning training the next day, as a result, he was “downgraded” as a substitute in the game against the eagle, playing only 23 minutes.
“I told Jamal that hard work is a good thing, but it is a bit outrageous. We have already advised him to take less of the stadium and take good care of his body. The pressure of 82 games is not a joke. More practice may not always lead to good results.” The then president of Nuggets basketball operations said.
I don’t know if this is a word.
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When Murray torn the ligament in 2021, the Nuggets were gaining momentum, just getting better for the playoff run-in. His reimbursement directly ended all the team’s hopes of winning the championship and finally stopped the round. Murray, who has always been walking on the court, cannot walk normally for nearly half a year.
Two months after the operation, he struggled to resume training. As a result of trying to hold the barbell hard, his left leg was not strong at all, and his thigh muscle shrank to half the size of the right side, even leg extension cannot be completed.
Therefore, he could only tell himself to slow down, step by step, and run and jump slightly in the water first, later, he could finally stand under the basket and grab the basket and lift it (surprisingly Murray said that he had never practiced this before and had never been able to do it. He was 1.93 meters tall, just like Wade).
Day after day, week after week, he needs to complete monotonous and boring one-leg training and protective squat to take care of every muscle. Of course, he can’t lift the barbell at all before, and re-exercise the gluteus maximus and quadriceps femoris, find the explosive force and make it better than before.
This kind of “practice” makes Murray feel like a fool. He even started to systematically re-watch his game video, “I watch the game with 50 points every day. Look at those who perform poorly. I recorded the training every day, carefully studied the steps, found the place where I could improve, and recorded the details that I couldn’t notice at all.”
Therefore, you have reason to believe that Murray is ready to start again. Interestingly, his first dunk after his comeback this season happened to be in the face of LeBlanc, and he also played a 20 + consecutive performance soon afterwards.
“My Control of rhythm is different from the past,” he said. “I became more relaxed, no longer forced myself to read more information about the competition.”
Although the score did have ups and downs, Murray’s three-point shooting rate in the regular season was only one percentage point lower than the peak before the injury, and 6.2 to 2.2 assists and mistakes were the best in his career.
In the playoffs, he showed his strength, especially the G1, who beat the Sun at home. He shot 34 points and 9 assists at will, and shouted at himself “looking forward to this moment” with his domineering spirit “.
LeBlanc, who just eliminated the Warriors, said that the Nuggets were stronger than three years ago, “We will fight with the highest respect for this team.”
His absence from the two-year playoffs only made Murray more aware of how much the team wanted and needed his contribution. He has been regarded as the biggest X Factor in the Western finals, because he is different from Zhan Mei jokiki, and no one is sure whether (or when) he will break through more limits.
“I basically believe that he has super abilities,” Roger said. “I watched him develop such a mentality and watch him sweat so much for his dream. He will never give up, and he will never let anyone stop him from moving towards the goal.”
In the ice and snow of Canada, little Murray gritted his teeth against his father’s broad body and retreated three points again and again. The ball went off the mark, but his enthusiasm was enough to melt the ice and snow. Today, he can still feel the concentration, self-discipline and modesty that have gradually become scarce in this era, and the purity of the commitments.
As for his next goal?
“Not to be yourself before the injury, but to be stronger than yourself.”
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(Text/kewell)