Emmanuel Mudiay darted up the floor with a little over a minute remaining looking for some revenge.
With the Knicks trailing 111-105 and in dire need of a basket, he crossed Pepsi Center’s midcourt line and called his own number. Mudiay motioned for Noah Vonleh to clear out of the paint, ensuring that the entire left side of the floor was vacant except for Jamal Murray, who shadowed the Knicks’ guard for most of Tuesday’s matchup just as he had in hundreds of practices where the two point guards went toe-to-toe throughout Mudiay’s final two seasons in Denver.
Mudiay spun, turned his backside into his defender, pounded the ball into the hardwood seven times and tried to play bully ball with the smaller Murray. But Mudiay couldn’t gain any ground. After a series of pivots, all of which were thwarted by Murray, Mudiay tried to fling the ball towards the basket in hopes of drawing a whistle from the nearest official. But Murray blocked his shot, the ceremonial dagger in a 115-108 Nuggets win.
“We competed hard. Me personally, I missed too many easy shots. Too many easy bunnies,” Mudiay said reflecting on an up-and-down night where he finished with 15 points on 7-20 shooting, to go with three rebounds, nine assists, two steals and four turnovers.
It was as if Murray knew exactly what was coming on the game-defining possession that the Nuggets turned into two points moments later, sealing their 24th win of the season. Then again, it shouldn’t have been too big of a surprise that Murray was able to anticipate Mudiay’s next move before it happened. Similar sequences undoubtedly unfolded time and time again over the two seasons they spent together on the Nuggets’ second-floor practice court where Murray went from Mudiay’s understudy as a rookie to overtaking him as the Nuggets’ starting point guard during training camp prior to the start of the 2017-18 season.
“What do you remember? We all were here,” Murray said brushing off a question about what it was like to go up against Mudiay in practice.
Media isn’t privy to Nuggets practices but it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to take a guess at what transpired when the two went mano-a-mano behind closed doors.
The sequence was a fitting end to a highly-anticipated reunion after last season’s trade deadline split that’s left both sides — the Nuggets and Mudiay — in better places. Denver has taken off since it flipped Mudiay to New York in the three-team deal that netted the Nuggets Devin Harris, compiling a 41-22 record since the trade. Mudiay got a fresh start in New York where the lights may be bright but the expectations are rather dim for the Knicks who will be jockeying for pole position in the Zion Williamson sweepstakes come April rather than a spot in the postseason.
While the Knicks can take Mudiay’s mistakes in stride, the playoff-hungry Nuggets couldn’t live with them a year ago. Denver anointed Mudiay as its backup point guard last fall and at first, the Nuggets were able to overcome his poor play and stay within striking distance of a playoff spot. But after Mudiay, who faced a mountain of expectations and was billed as the face of the franchise when Denver selected the then 19-year-old seventh overall in 2015, got healthy following an ankle sprain in late December, he never regained his spot in the Nuggets’ rotation.
“A lot was thrust on his plate, coming in after Ty Lawson,” Michael Malone said reflecting on Mudiay’s time in Denver. “We take him number seven. We trade Ty. He’s our starter. Probably in hindsight, a little too much.”
Mudiay is averaging 14.2 points, 2.9 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game for New York this season. He’s shooting a career-high 46.4 percent from the field but has struggled with his three-point shot, hitting only 32.0 percent of his long-range attempts. Mudiay has improved in some aspects of his game, like his ability to finish at the rim where he’s converting 54 percent of his shots from that distance this year and is also knocking down 50 percent of his midrange shot attempts, a 17 percent increase from his last year in Denver. However, the questionable shot selection and poor decision-making that haunted the point guard for two-plus seasons in Denver reared its ugly head again Tuesday.
At just 22-years-old, there’s still ample time for Mudiay to develop into the player that many draft analysts thought the consensus lottery pick would be at the NBA level.
“I wasn’t his teammate for long but I got to know him pretty well,” said Paul Millsap, who spent half a season with Mudiay in Denver last year. “He’s a great guy, an unbelievable guy and a guy that just needed an opportunity. You can tell he’s flourishing over in New York. They have confidence in him to be their starting point guard. I’m happy for him. He started kicking our butts early tonight. I’m glad he got cold. But I’m always on his side I hope the best for him.”
Mudiay looks back at his time in Denver fondly. “There were some great experiences,” he said before boarding the Knicks’ team bus late Tuesday night. But he’s clearly moved on and is charting his own path, just as the Nuggets have done themselves to the top of the Western Conference behind Nikola Jokic and Murray, who took Mudiay’s job in Denver a year and a half ago and will always be tethered to the Knicks’ point guard in Nuggets lore.
Mudiay didn’t get his revenge on Denver or Murray on Tuesday’s symbolic late-game sequence, but he might have outplayed his counterpart, who was quiet, scoring just eight points after tallying 31 against the Spurs and 46 in Phoenix two nights ago. It wasn’t the result Mudiay was looking for in the first game against his former club, but a consolation prize nonetheless and something he can keep in his back pocket for when he meets Murray and the Nuggets again in March, on his turf.
