One Swing Skill: Collin Murray-Boyles Defense
It’s hard to be impactful as a rookie. Only four rookies from last season won their minutes: Zach Edey, Jaylen Wells, Quintin Post, and Kel’El Ware (among rookies that played more than 41 games and averaged more than 10 minutes). Even the Rookie of the Year, Stephon Castle, who, for all intents and purposes, was awesome in his first season in San Antonio, lost his minutes.
There are a few reasons for this. For starters, most top prospects get drafted by bad teams, and those teams stay bad, so they lose their minutes regardless. And secondly, most rookies are not good defenders.
But the Raptors’ ninth overall pick, Collin Murray-Boyles, has a chance to buck that trend.
CMB had a slow start to his first Summer League, derailed by injuries and a nervous start, but he quickly began to assert himself defensively, dominating with his active hands, impressive timing, and the way he used his body to deter drives.
This is par for the course for the type of player he was in two years at South Carolina. Murray-Boyles led his team in steals and blocks last season, and was top 2 in that category in his freshman year. He graded out as an excellent post-up defender and was good to excellent in every other category, including guarding isolations and pick-and-rolls.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a flaw in CMB as a defender at the college level. Against Summer League competition, he was able to flex that muscle in a major way and eventually helped heighten the Raptors’ style on that end with his relentless ball pressure and activity, helping them force turnovers.
The NBA is a significant step above Vegas: bigger, faster, stronger, and more well-trained athletes. How Murray-Boyles can hang on the defensive end at the pro level is the biggest swing skill for his rookie season.
It’s worth clarifying here: Murray-Boyles projects to be an elite defender in his career, potentially even All-Defense level, but we’re talking about what he can do as a rookie, and impacting the game on defense in year 1 is a tall task.
But this is his path to more minutes next season for a team that’s trying to win games, particularly for a team that still has unanswered questions about who cracks the night-to-night rotation. CMB has a real chance to be a consistent part of the Raptors’ bench platoon because of how he matches the Raptors’ proposed defensive identity: he’s long, nimble for his size, and his strength gives him the potential to guard multiple positions.
More specifically, how well he handles switching will be the key to just how impactful he is on that end. The Raptors are likely to throw CMB in lineups alongside Scottie Barnes, Jonathan Mogbo, and/or Sandro Mamukelashvili, where the Raptors can play smaller, but also more chaotic defensively. Murray-Boyles can truly weaponize his length, speed, and strength in these settings.
Looking further, his defense will also provide him the opportunity to figure out what he can do offensively in the NBA.
This side of the ball is much more of a question mark for CMB, and one that fascinates me in terms of how Darko Rajakovic slots him into certain lineups. Will he be asked to play a small-ball five of sorts? He did so in college for the Gamecocks. How often will he be used as a screener in pick-and-roll situations? How much can he physically impose himself as a driver and cutter? Murray-Boyles finished on 67% of his shots at the rim last year. What is that number in the NBA as a rookie?
Beyond that, how often do the Raptors put the ball in Murray-Boyles’ hands? Part of his offensive utility is his ability to make plays out of dribble hand-offs and in the short-roll in the middle of the floor. The Raptors system bodes well for this type of player, as we’ve seen in recent years with Jakob Poeltl, Kelly Olynyk, and Scottie Barnes. Will CMB get to stretch his legs as a playmaker?
Of course, a lot of the offensive conversation will be about how well he shoots the ball. But almost just as important is where the Raptors position him in the offense. He’ll likely be relegated to the dunker spot and to the corners. So, can he knock down the occasional corner three? Can he crash the offensive glass and win extra possessions for the Raptors’ offense? Can he be a garbage man of sorts and make the most of the scraps he gets?
This answer to these questions are unknown… for now.
But what is clear is the path to a successful season for Murray-Boyles:
- Crack the rotation by being an impact defender, meshing with the Raptors’ identity on that end.
- Thriving in the liminal spaces off the offense, working as a garbage man, and showing off his touch around the basket as a driver.
- Help win basketball games.
All of that is achievable for him. And you know what’s great? Even if he does one or two of those things, he’ll have had a successful rookie season because the stakes are low for him on a team that plans to be deep and competitive even without him.
The Raptors can afford to be patient with CMB. But chances are, CMB won’t let them if things pan out how they should.
The post One Swing Skill: Collin Murray-Boyles Defense first appeared on Raptors Republic.