During his dormant rookie season, Jalen Pickett occasionally played one-on-one against Jamal Murray. Pickett was the Nuggets’ fourth-string point guard, grasping for reps wherever he could find them.
On the practice court in Denver, he found not only a basketball challenge, but emotional sustenance from a star player.
“He’d seen I had a little bit of game,” Pickett said of Murray. “He was always just telling me I’d get a chance, I’d get an opportunity. He also told me he missed, like, his first 20 shots (of his career), or whatever it was.”
Seventeen, to be exact.