Canadian Jamal Murray and the Denver Nuggets are NBA champions

The Denver Nuggets are NBA champions after beating the Miami Heat in game five of the finals on Monday night to claim the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

While Nikola Jokic was unsurprisingly named NBA Finals MVP, Canadian Jamal Murray was the other player that drove the bus for the Nuggets all season and playoffs long.

The Kitchener, Ont., native became just the fourth player to average 20 or more points and 10 or more assists per game in the NBA Finals.

He is now just the ninth Canadian in NBA history to win the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

It’s been quite the journey for Murray, who was an elite high school basketball player in Ontario before committing to play college ball at the University of Kentucky.

After just one year with the Wildcats, he declared for the NBA draft and was selected seventh overall by the Nuggets in 2016.

In the years that followed, he established himself as a top tier NBA player and helped Denver to the third round of the playoffs in 2020, when teams were confined to a bubble due to COVID-19.

He was having another great year in 2020-21, but on April 12, 2021, Murray suffered a torn ACL that forced him to miss the rest of the season and all of the 2021-22 campaign.

The Canadian hooper missed 18 months of action in total, returning to the Nuggets lineup on Oct. 19, 2022.

Along with Jokic, Murray was a leader for the Nuggets all season and it culminated in the franchise’s first ever title win on Monday night.

“I envisioned this as a young ‘un growing up, so, I say as long as I stuck with the same mentality that I had growing up that I would have, I’ll be in the right spot,” Murray said Monday night.

“I had to keep saying my prayers, keep putting in the work and everything would take care of itself.”

It’s been a long and arduous ride for the Nuggets since joining the NBA in 1976, but after nearly half a century, the franchise can finally celebrate its first championship.