SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Kings rookie Keegan Murray’s monotone voice can be hard to hear. The 22-year-old forward speaks softly, but that belies his confidence.
Case in point: He’ll occasionally offer friendly smack talk to point guard De’Aaron Fox, talking about “catching bodies” in the form of more posterizing dunks, which Fox has made a habit of recently, which leads to the outspoken Fox firing back.
“I get Keegan to talk a lot,” Fox said recently. “I definitely get him to talk a lot.”
Doing most of the talking for Murray these days is his 3-point shooting. The No. 4 pick in June’s NBA draft is shooting 40.4% from distance, easily the highest clip in the league among first-year players who have appeared in at least 30 games. His 2.4 makes and 5.9 attempts per game also pace his rookie class.
That has helped the Kings become the third-most efficient offense in the NBA through half of the season. The team’s 117.3 offensive rating heading into Tuesday's games ranks only behind the Boston Celtics (117.8) and Denver Nuggets (117.5). Murray is averaging 11.8 points per game, ranking fifth among rookies.
Oddly enough, Murray is shooting at a better rate from behind the arc than he did during his last season in college. Murray shot 39.8% on 4.7 attempts per game with the Iowa Hawkeyes, attempting 1.2 fewer 3s than he is now in the pros.
“I just think it’s the shots that I’m getting,” Murray said. “I feel like I took a lot of tougher shots in college. And now we have a lot of better spacing and I feel like my shots are more in rhythm and things like that.”
Indeed, Murray didn’t have a pair of NBA All-Star caliber players in Fox and Domantas Sabonis getting him the ball in favorable spots. Nor did he have veteran shooters around him who defenses had to account for like Kevin Huerter or Harrison Barnes.
“I like his shot selection, especially with the way we play,” Kings coach Mike Brown said. “We’re preaching pace, pace, pace, whether it’s in the half court, but particularly in the full court, even after makes. And so he’s doing a great job, especially getting to the corners. And there are times when he sprints to the corners and he doesn’t get the ball, but he flattens the defense and opens the paint (so) guys are able to get in there and score. So the way he’s playing, we love it.”
Murray’s been playing with a thumb injury on his left, non-shooting hand since early December that’s required him to wear a wrap similar to what Sabonis has sported since suffering an avulsion fracture to his right thumb last month. Murray has not disclosed details of his injury, but he noted he hasn’t been able to palm the ball with his left hand.
“So that sucks, but it is what it is,” Murray said. “I’ll just have to work around it.”
Murray said his distance shooting was a priority in workouts leading up to the draft. He focused on his footwork, first and foremost. And he’s often seen after practice or shootaround getting extra shots up.
“He really works at it,” Brown said. “Maybe one or two (times) all year there was a time where he took a quote-unquote ‘bad, off-balanced three.’ Most of his threes, he’s getting to the spot, he’s getting his feet set, and he’s getting ready to shoot. All of the stuff you teach little kids … he’s doing it to a tee. His preparation, on the offensive end of the floor, in my opinion, and the guys believing and trusting in him, putting that thing right on time and right on target, have a lot to do with him knocking that three-ball down.”
But Murray’s overall game has a long way to go. He’s shooting just 47.7% on 2-point attempts, which ranks dead last among Kings’ rotation players (only Matthew Dellavedova’s 35.7% clip is worse on the roster). That comes as a surprise given he shot 62.1% on 2s with the Hawkeyes last year.
Perhaps his efficiency on those shots will normalize as the season continues, and maybe his hand injury is hampering his ability to finish at the rim in traffic. Either way, the Kings seem more concerned about Murray’s rebounding (he’s averaging just 3.8 rebounds per game as a starting forward) than his two-point efficiency.
“Obviously, as he gets more time under his belt in this league, he’ll find ways to be able to score from the two-point (area),” Brown said. “The only thing I told him is, when he drives, drive to dunk it. ‘You’re long, you’re athletic, you’re strong for a young guy,’ and you know at worst he’s going to go to the free-throw line because not many people can get up and block his shot clearly if he’s driving aggressively.”
