Jamal Murray Explains Why Stephen Curry is the Toughest Player to Guard in NBA

Jamal Murray has seen quite a lot in his little over four years into the NBA. He has been to the playoffs twice and has already experienced Game 7 pressure four times. A young Jamal has played an anchor role in all of these outings. He has given performances good enough that lately, he has seen himself being compared to Stephen Curry.

The NBA Playoffs 2020 were especially a star turn for him. He managed to record 26.5 points at 50.5% from the field. Even during the 1-4 loss against the Lakers in the conference finals, he held an impressive average of 25 ppg. Still, the Canadian combo-guard is far from achieving the position to defend the likes of Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry. 

The Denver Nuggets star accepts that guarding the Warriors’ legend is a real challenge

In a recent virtual interview, Jamal (carrying his pet bird) answered many rapid-fire questions. For one of these questions, he chuckled but revealed the toughest player to guard in the league. 

“Steph is really hard to guard. One because he’s short, and two because you don’t know what he’s gonna do. You don’t know if he’s just gonna pull it, you don’t know if he’s just going to end up going by you, if he’s gonna cross you over six times, and then shoot and look away, you absolutely have no clue what he’s gonna do. And I’ve to go with him.”

Murray has a size-advantage as a guard, but his foot speed is yet not sharp enough to match with Curry’s movements.

Clearly, The Blue Arrow has seen some tough times against the GSW great. 

Stephen Curry and Jamal Murray: An interesting coincidence!

Back in 2015-16 when Stephen Curry was taking the NBA league by storm, Jamal in his freshman year was treading his own path. Arguably one of the greatest shooters in the league, Curry was shooting threes at the insane accuracy of 45.4% that season.

Parallelly, Jamal was shooting at 40.8% for the University of Kentucky, averaging 7.7 attempts per game. Even during the post-season 2020, Jamal made 3.3 three-pointers per game at 45.3%.

Evidently, Jamal is very much loaded with weapons to become as good as Steph. He has been compared to Steph ever since he was left just nine three-pointers away from touching Curry’s NCAA record. Jamal is a knock-down shooter and good at splitting the defense to make the plays. But he needs to work upon his defense against the very best. Head to head, he has won three games against Curry and lost seven. Let’s see how they play against one another in the coming season.