Jamal Murray is making a splash on the NBA courts with the Denver Nuggets. What is his position with the team?
Jamal Murray plays as a point guard. The Canadian basketball player plays for the Denver Nuggets in the National Basketball Association. Jamal played basketball from age three and showed his natural talent at only six-years-old.
Scroll down to read more about what a point guard does in basketball, how Jamal Murray became a young basketball star, and the record he recently broke.
What is a Point Guard?
The point guard is often argued to be the most important position in the world of basketball. That’s because as the point guard, it is your job to run the team’s offensive plays.
A point guard doesn’t only help to run the plays and the team’s offensive strategy, it is essentially their job to lead the team. In order to run the offensive strategy for the team, the point guard has to know the strengths and weaknesses of their teammates.
This comes in handy because it is also their job to set up plays. If they don’t know the strengths of their teammates then they could unwittingly play the ball into the other team’s hands.
The point guard also needs to be in good control of the ball and their playing skills. Because they are setting up plays, they can’t be thinking about whether they are dribbling correctly or not.
Of course, Jamal Murray is a professional basketball player so he has his dribbling down to the highest level it could be. And, so is his passing.
Some of the biggest names in basketball history were point guards. Magic Johnson, Steve Nash, Steph Curry, and Allen Iverson have all played as point guards.
Jamal Murray happens to hold a bigger career achievement than all of these players though, but we’ll get to that.
You can watch Jamal Murray scoring 50 points in one game in the below highlights video from the NBA.
Jamal Murray’s Promising Beginnings
From a very young age, Jamal Murray’s father, Roger Murray, saw huge potential in his son. When Jamal was only three-years-old he would play basketball outside for hours on end in their hometown of Kitchener, Ontario.
Jamal spent his childhood following his father to different basketball games in different areas. He would watch grown men playing the game while still drinking from a bottle and being pushed around in a stroller.
It was when he was only seven-years-old that he was playing against kids that were almost twice his age and he was giving them a run for their money. This was thanks to his father’s push.
As this Denver Post article puts it, Roger Murray would have Jamal stand at the free-throw line and make shot after shot. He told his son that he had to make 30 shots in a row.
This style of teaching drove Jamal Murray to have a drive that is seen only in top athletes. It’s also this drive that has had Jamal Murray playing through painful injuries just so he can support his team.
It was also other forms of untraditional training at the hands of Roger that have led Jamal Murray to a highly successful career. Roger is a martial artist who would make Jamal balance a hot cup of tea on his knee while holding a deep squat.
He also played basketball outside in the brisk Ontario winters and cutting winds. So by the time he was in high school, he and his team were playing at the international level.
