And then there was one.

If you had told Jamal Murray in early October that he’d be the last Denver Nuggets starter standing by the time New Year’s Day arrived, and that so much of the weight of his title-contending team’s workload would be heaped up on him in this crucial midseason stretch, then perhaps his delightful mood might have been different. As if losing three-time MVP Nikola Jokić for at least a month to a left knee injury on Monday night wasn’t disastrous enough on its own, the Nuggets (23-10; third in the Western Conference) are also without guard Christian Braun (left ankle sprain suffered on Nov. 12), forward Aaron Gordon (hamstring injury on Nov. 21), small forward Cam Johnson (right knee bone bruise on Dec. 23) and backup big man Jonas Valanciunas (right calf strain on Wednesday).

When Murray and I spoke at UC San Diego during training camp three months ago — long before this rash of injuries wrecked the very plan they spent all that time putting in place — the 29-year-old had never seemed lighter. He was a man unburdened, with the messiness and (relative) mediocrity of the previous season having made way for a summer that left his mind and body revitalized.

In stark contrast to the offseason before, when the combination of his contract situation and physical ailments made his Olympic experience with Team Canada more challenging than he’d hoped for, Murray had found his balance again. He had time to travel, citing treks to Japan and the Cayman Islands as the top highlights in between trips back to his adopted home in Denver.

There was plenty of time to “just chill and take care of the family,” said Murray, whose young daughter is a regular at the team’s facility. He enjoyed a steady dose of his second-favorite sport: the UFC training he has taken part in for quite a few years now.

After all the chaos that they’d navigated in early April, when the Nuggets fired their general manager and longtime coach just days before the playoffs began and ultimately fell to eventual champion Oklahoma City in the second round, Murray was badly in need of a basketball break.

“(With) Team Canada, it’s in the middle of my summer, where I got to decompress for a week (after the NBA season), try to get in shape for Team Canada, and then try to decompress for the season,” Murray told me then. “It was just — I couldn’t do it. So this summer, just being done — and really being done — was an incredible feeling. There was the first week of just doing nothing, then two weeks of doing nothing. And then I just worked out. I didn’t really play basketball.”

Compared to the year before, when ankle injuries had hampered him in the 2024 playoffs and a sore Achilles quietly nagged at him during the Olympics, this was a desperately-needed change of pace.