Jamal Murray and the Denver Nuggets have agreed to a four-year, $208 million contract extension, his agents, Jeff Schwartz and Mike George, told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on Saturday.
This is the richest extension the Nuggets could offer Murray. It will kick in during the 2025-26 season and keep him under contract through 2028-29. Murray will make $57.5 million in the final season of the deal, per ESPN's Bobby Marks.
Murray, 27, has spent his entire career with the Nuggets since they drafted him No. 7 overall in 2016. Last season, he averaged 21.2 points, 4.1 rebounds and 6.5 assists in 59 regular-season games.
Back in July, before Murray played for the Canadian national team at the Paris Olympics, Denver general manager Calvin Booth hinted that this was coming.
"Jamal's been a staple of our program for the last eight years, essentially, right? So obviously we're very interested in getting something done with him," Booth said in an interview on SiriusXM Radio. "The Olympics are a big deal. I think having him focus on that and getting through that, and when he gets back, when that concludes, I think it'll be pretty easy. I don't think it'll be much of a negotiation."
Booth added, "We look at Jamal as a star player. When you look at him like that, he's probably going to end up getting what he deserves."
Murray has yet to make an All-Star or All-NBA team, but he has a long list of superstar-level performances on his résumé. Most notably, he scored at least 30 points in eight playoff games during the Nuggets' 2023 championship run and had two separate 50-point explosions during their first-round series against the Utah Jazz in the 2020 bubble (with a 42-point game sandwiched between them).
This contract extension is effectively a bet on Murray having more moments like those. It is also a bet on him being able to stay healthy for long playoff runs. Last season, Murray missed time because of hamstring, knee, ankle and shin issues. He appeared in all of Denver's playoff games, but played through both a calf injury and an elbow injury. While he made two game-winners in the Nuggets' first-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers and scored 35 points in Game 7 of their second-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves, overall Murray was clearly not himself at the end of the season, as evidenced by his unusually poor efficiency numbers in the playoffs: 40.2% from the field, 31.5% from deep, 47.4% true shooting.
Murray's shooting percentages were even worse at the Olympics. He came off the bench for Canada, and when he was on the floor, he was unable to consistently create separation from defenders. For one of the game's premier one-on-one creators, this was alarming.
Evidently, though, Denver's front office is not worried about how Murray has looked recently. Or at least not worried enough to jeopardize its big-picture vision, in which Murray's two-man game with three-time MVP Nikola Jokic remains the foundation of the Nuggets' offense. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, the team's stalwart 3-and-D guard, left the team in free agency this summer, following the footsteps of Bruce Brown and Jeff Green and leaving Denver with some serious uncertainty when it comes to the wing rotation. There is no uncertainty now, though, about Murray's standing in the organization: The contract signals that he is a franchise cornerstone, and that the Nuggets will continue to build around him and Jokic.
Had Murray and Denver not been able to work out an extension, he would have hit unrestricted free agency following the 2024-25 season. With Jayson Tatum, Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell, Lauri Markkanen, Derrick White and Ivica Zubac among those who have signed extensions this summer, the list of big-name (or even medium-name) potential 2025 free agents is dwindling by the day.
