John Calipari congratulates Jamal Murray on winning ESPY for Best Comeback Player
Jamal Murray was awarded the ESPY for Best Comeback Player for the role he played in helping the Denver Nuggets win the 2023 NBA Finals on Wednesday night.
Kentucky head coach John Calipari — who has always been an immense supporter of the Nugget star — took to Twitter, wasting no time letting everyone know how proud he is of his former Wildcat.
“An NBA Championship and now an award honoring the fight and will it took to come back and be as good as ever!?! Congrats, [Jamal Murray]!” Calipari wrote. “You deserve this!”
After tearing his ACL late in the 2020-2021 season, Murray was forced onto the sidelines for 18 months before finally being cleared to return this past season. While posting respectable numbers, Murray waited until the playoffs to go crazy. In 20 postseason contests, Murray averaged 26.1 points, 5.7 rebounds, 7.1 assists, and 1.5 steals in 40.0 minutes per outing en route to his first NBA Finals series victory.
During that run, Murray became the first player in NBA history to ever have 10+ assists in each of his first four NBA Finals games. He went on to average 10.0 assists on the season.
Murray spent one season under John Calipari in Lexington during the 2015-16 season. He ended up averaging 20.0 points — which included over three 3-pointers per game — 5.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game. The points per game average is still the most of any Wildcat of the Calipari era. Calipari pushed Murray the whole way through.
“That’s my guy,” Murray said of Calipari, via Vinny Benedetto of the Denver Gazzette after Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals. “He knows what I’ve been through. He knows my game. He knows what I’m capable of.”
Murray showed off in front of his former coach, scoring 26 points on 4-of-7 shooting from beyond the arc in a 125-100 series-deciding victory against the Phoenix Suns. The Nuggets would go on to win eight of their next nine games to win the organization’s first-ever NBA title.
That scoring mark wasn’t the only mark he left on the Kentucky record books. He scored 113 3-pointers during his lone season under Calipari — good for the second most in a single season in Kentucky history. His 36-straight games with a 3-pointer is a school record as well.
These accolades made it a no-brainer for the Denver Nuggets to draft Murray with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft.