Nuggets vs. Grizzlies takeaways: Jamal Murray steadying the ship for Denver

Bennett Durando, The Denver Post on Nov 24, 2025

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The Denver Nuggets have lost their last two home games, but they’ve won six in a row on the road after a 125-115 victory at the Memphis Grizzlies Monday night.

Here are three takeaways as Denver improved to 13-4 going into a three-day break:

Watson: 3-and-D?

That’s not how Watson has been known in his first three NBA seasons. But it could be his most feasible route to a lucrative second contract next summer. The Watson corner 3 renaissance has resumed lately. The two highest-scoring games of his career have occurred in the last week after he went for another 27 points in Memphis, going 11 of 22 from the field and making five 3-pointers.

The young forward entered this game shooting 11 for 15 on corner 3s this season. He was quietly efficient from the corners last year as well, despite struggling on his 3-point attempts above the break. Early this season, he wasn’t spotting up in the corners as often because he was assuming more ball-handling responsibility with the second unit.

But recently, he’s been filling in for Aaron Gordon and Christian Braun in the starting lineup, where his role necessitates that he occupy that area of the floor more. He missed his first 3 outside attempts Monday — all of them from the corners — but kept launching every time he had a few inches of space.

The Nuggets hit 22 shots from 3 as a team in the win.

Bench unit’s zone

Jamal Murray almost always starts the second quarter and plays the bulk of the non-Jokic minutes in that frame, but his rotation was different in Memphis. Cam Johnson staggered instead for a new-look bench unit that coach David Adelman was willing to ride for more than six minutes. That was mostly because of the effective execution of a 2-3 zone defense with Jonas Valanciunas in the middle, Bruce Brown and Tim Hardaway Jr. up top and Johnson and Zeke Nnaji in the corners.

That lineup won its minutes 19-10 while holding Memphis to a 1 for 7 stretch from 3-point range. Valanciunas supplied solid minutes despite missing a couple of tip-in opportunities. He converted a tough jump shot over Jaren Jackson Jr. and found Nnaji for a corner 3-pointer when the Grizzlies helped away from him to stop Valanciunas on the short roll. Hardaway and Brown shared the same minutes in the first half and were a plus-15.

After Jokic and the starters returned, Denver didn’t execute the zone as cleanly, and Memphis shaved a 13-point deficit to eight by halftime. The Nuggets, in general, have been prone to giving up ball-movement 3s lately when collapsing to the paint. Their hosts Monday got up 37 attempts by the end of the third quarter and 47 total.

Murray clean and dominant

Murray did return to his second-unit stagger rotation at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and he gave Denver the push it needed. He and Jock Landale shared a laugh after Murray buried a deep off-balance 3 over the Memphis backup center.

Then Murray’s play-making skills kicked into high gear as the Grizzlies showed him a crowd, like most defenses do when he’s the focal point rather than Jokic. “He’s just made really clean decisions,” Adelman said over the weekend. “… The more repetition he’s had live in games, the more he’s seen (double-teams), I think he’s figured it out easier.”

Murray dished consecutive assists to extend the lead to 13 and force a Tuomas Iisalo timeout. The second of those was behind the back to Nnaji, who cashed another 3-ball to finish up a productive night as Adelman’s ninth man.

The Grizzlies pieced together a 10-0 run after Murray went to the bench to rest in the fourth. Once he returned, he knocked down two more 3-pointers in the last 3:30, both of them pushing the lead back to nine. The point guard finished another steady performance with 29 points and eight assists with a 6 for 9 clip beyond the arc. He had no turnovers until the last two minutes.

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