However, when Jamal Murray is playing at his peak next to Jokic, Denver looks like the team that won a ring just a couple of years ago. We saw that Murray on Wednesday night when he dropped a career-high 55 points on the Trail Blazers in a Nuggets win.

When the Denver Nuggets decided this summer to give Jamal Murray a four-year, $208 million contract extension — the most money they could have paid him, over the maximum number of years, coming off the rockiest stretch of his eight-year career — plenty of people wondered why.