How Raptors rookie Murray-Boyles fell in love with playing defence

TORONTO – In the span of 30 seconds, Collin Murray-Boyles introduced himself to Raptors fans.

It was late in the third quarter of his third NBA Summer League game. The sequence began with a dump-off pass from teammate A.J. Lawson, which Murray-Boyles finished through contact. Then, picking up full court, he forced a quick steal and threw down a one-handed slam dunk. On the next possession, he skied over an opposing player to grab the offensive rebound and bank in a putback layup.

The rookie was impressive throughout, exploding for 20 points, nine rebounds and four steals in the contest, but that half-minute snapshot showed why Toronto’s front office fell in love with the versatile big man from Columbia, S.C., and made him the ninth-overall pick in the draft a few weeks earlier.

Murray-Boyles was widely considered to be among the best defensive prospects in this summer’s draft class. Watch him play and you’ll get it. He loves to guard and, at 6-foot-7 with a 7-foot-1 wingspan, 8-foot-10 standing reach and enormous hands, he has the physical tools to do it at a very high level. Talk to him for even a few minutes and you’ll quickly learn that he has the mindset for it too.

“I feel like you’ve just gotta want to defend,” Murray-Boyles told TSN ahead of his Summer League debut in Las Vegas last month. “That’s the biggest thing is mentality. It’s not easy at all… It’s instinct. You have to really get into it. There’s no learning the want-to defend. It’s impossible to learn. It’s something you have to want in the moment.”

Given how passionate he is about defence, how good he is at it, and how naturally it comes to him, most people would be surprised to discover that the 20-year-old is a recent convert. Prior to his senior year of high school, Murray-Boyles considered himself to be more of an offensive-minded player. To his own admission, the defensive end of the floor was not a big priority.

Thanks to a late growth spurt, Murray-Boyles grew up with the ball in his hands, which explains the versatility in his game all these years later. He’s always been a gifted passer and creative playmaker. He was a hard worker; the type of kid that would wake up at 5 a.m. to squeeze in a morning workout before getting ready for school. 

He had a strong support system around him. His mother, Yvonne, is a lawyer. His father, Sean, works in construction. His oldest brother, James, nine years his senior, played ball at UNC Pembroke and still plays professionally overseas – even from the other side of the globe, he would watch film and give his younger brother feedback. It was a small inner circle that set Murray-Boyles up for success.

“When we first started working out, he had good footwork, good hands, good touch, but I didn’t know how big he was going to be,” said his former AAU coach and long-time trainer Khadijah Sessions. “I thought he was going to stop growing, so we started doing guard workouts. That’s how it started. He kinda got thrown into the fire with me.”

A star point guard at South Carolina, where she led the women’s team to SEC regular season titles in three of her four seasons before going pro in Finland and representing the United States at the 2019 FIBA AmeriCup, Sessions was fresh off her own playing career and branching into the world of coaching when she first met the ninth grader.

She had just inherited an AAU team for 14- and 15-year-old boys in the Columbia area and Murray-Boyles’ parents signed him up to play. Soon after, they asked her to be their son’s full-time trainer.

For two years, she would coach Murray-Boyles on the weekends, identify the areas of his game that he needed to work on, and then implement them into four or five training sessions during the week. In that time, he and his family turned down multiple opportunities to play for higher-profile circuit teams, which would have given him more national exposure. He was a loyal kid, and the decision to stick with Sessions spoke to his commitment to their developmental plan.

“He was always undersized, but it was never a problem,” Sessions said. “We played some of the top kids in the country when I had him. I saw him guard 7-footers. Any time he ever switched out on a guard, I was so impressed with his ability to deflect the ball or cover ground and block shots, get rebounds. He was always strong, always athletic, and he always had a will for defence. He might not have loved it when he first came and played with me, but he understood himself at an early age. I had to just pull it out of him a little bit more.”

Finally, Murray-Boyles hit his growth spurt ahead of his junior year at A.C. Flora High School. He sprouted to 6-foot-6. He got bigger and stronger, his arms grew longer, and his game took off from there. He averaged 34.3 points, 11.4 rebounds and 5.3 blocks that season.

“It felt great,” he said. “My body changed in a couple months. I was the most energetic person I could possibly be. I was going crazy. I probably could’ve gotten a quadruple-double if I really put my mind to it. Even though I didn’t prioritize defence like that, I still impacted the game [on that end of the floor].”

It wasn’t until the following season that he truly started to embrace his gifts as a defender. He transferred to Wasatch Academy in Utah for his senior year of high school and began working with head coach Paul Peterson, whom he credits as one of his most important defensive mentors.

The first thing Peterson noticed about Murray-Boyles was his hands: the sheer size of them – “big, strong construction hands that he got from his dad,” he noted – but also how quick they were. 

“Quick to shoot, quick to pass, quick to strip the ball, quick to block shots, quick to rebound,” Peterson said. “With everything the rest of his body could do, it would be nothing without his hands.”

Defence is a non-negotiable for Peterson and it didn’t take him long to see Murray-Boyles’ elite potential. He encouraged the young man to utilize all his tools and not hold back; to play ultra-aggressively and allow his defence to fuel his offence, and not the other way around. Peterson empowered him and made him their defensive “safety net.” He told him to be fearless and gave him more freedom than ever before. 

“I don’t care if you get dunked on,” Peterson would say. “If you don’t jump, you’re in more trouble than getting dunked on.” 

As the season went on, he realized there was no limit to what Murray-Boyles could do on that end of the floor – he could hedge, he could play in drop coverage, he could use his quick hands on the guards, he could switch out. Meanwhile, Murray-Boyles saw the cause and effect of his defensive ability. The harder he played and the more he prioritized defence, the more valuable he became and the more he was able to contribute to team success.

“I just grew to love it,” he said.

A left-handed player himself, Murray-Boyles grew up watching and trying to emulate James Harden, but as his game started to take shape, his influences changed. He admired like-minded forwards such as Draymond Green, Aaron Gordon, Jalen Williams, Toumani Camara, and another player with famously big and quick hands, former Raptor Kawhi Leonard. He studied the way they used their length, physicality and anticipation, and how they balanced being aggressive without taking too many unnecessary risks.

In a narrow January loss to famed prep school Montverde Academy, Murray-Boyles went toe to toe with a 16-year-old phenom by the name of Cooper Flagg – Flagg finished with 27 points but the kid from South Carolina went off for 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. 

“After that, I called his dad and was like, ‘Hey man, we got something,’” Sessions said. “I knew he was going to be special.”

In just a few months, Murray-Boyles went from being an unknown commodity to a consensus four-star recruit and top 100 prospect in the country. He was named first team all-conference in the NIBC – Flagg, the eventual first-overall pick in the 2025 draft class, was selected to the second team.

By the end of the season, he had received multiple high-major offers but committed to the first school that expressed interest, his hometown University of South Carolina. There, he would continue his defensive evolution under head coach Lamont Paris. But first, there was work to be done.

“To me, I didn’t think he was in the best of shape,” Sessions said. “He didn’t have a good body his senior year at Wasatch in Utah. He didn’t move how he’s moving now. He was always strong and athletic and very skilled, so that made up for a lot of things, but he was heavyset. He was a big guy.”

Those who were around Murray-Boyles during that summer between high school and college say that he worked as if he was preparing for the draft, if not harder.

“He was full on conditioning,” Peterson said. “He hit the weight room and completely changed his diet.”

Paris remembers running into him at a local Publix supermarket and his shopping cart was full of fruit – for a period, that’s all he was eating.

“He did one of the most challenging things for any human beings,” Paris said. “He altered his diet in a way that helped him physically and probably went against what his taste buds would like to do. I struggle with it, most humans struggle with it, and young people certainly don’t want to do that. Honestly, there’s nothing that says commitment like that… His body looked great and he had made huge strides.”

With that – and a lengthy case of mononucleosis that delayed the start of his freshman campaign – a slimmed down Murray-Boyles was more mobile than ever before. He already showed that he had the capacity to be a very good defender, but at South Carolina, Paris helped him refine his skills. He learned the nuances of defending within a system and the discipline it sometimes required.

“He really bought into it, and I think he saw how good he was at it,” Paris said. “You never had to twist his arm to try to do more defensively or to value defence… I think anyone is going to enjoy doing what they do well; that’s just human nature. And he did it really well.”

This past season, Murray-Boyles was one of only four players in all of college basketball to average at least 16.0 points, eight rebounds, one steal and one block, and he did it while shooting a conference-best 59 per cent from the field. The only glaring weakness in his game, notably, was his jump shooting – he hit just nine of his 39 three-point attempts over his two collegiate seasons.

After helping South Carolina win a school-record 26 games as a freshman, the Gamecocks went just 12-20 in his sophomore campaign, but by all accounts, Murray-Boyles didn’t let the adversity impact his focus or effort level. He’s widely regarded as an excellent teammate and he showed it when his club needed him the most.

Paris was in the building to watch Murray-Boyles’ Summer League breakout in Vegas this past July. After the game, he had a message for the young man, something that he had never said to any of his players before.

“You might end up being a superstar,” Paris told him. “With some of the things you do and how impactful you are, once you get to working on your shot and adding to your game, there’s a path for you to be a superstar.”

“He is more of the modern-day Draymond [Green],” Sessions said. “He is a defender, he can defend all positions, he can pass, he can set his teammates up… He’s going to be a better Draymond. He’s going to shoot better than him. He’s going to be able to score better than him. But it’s going to be over time and I think him playing behind Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram is going to bring a different monster out of him.”

Green was a popular comparison for Murray-Boyles going into the draft, given his defensive versatility and knack for handling and passing the ball at the forward position. But the four-time all-star, four-time NBA champion, former Defensive Player of the Year and future Hall of Famer is at the very high end of his potential outcomes. There aren’t many players that have been able to do what Green has done in Golden State over the past 13 years. 

Paris also offered up an interesting, and equally as bold, comparison: seven-time all-pro linebacker and football Hall of Famer Ray Lewis. As he watched Murray-Boyles throw his body around for the Raptors in Vegas, diving on the floor for loose balls, busting up passing lanes, and finding ways to force his will onto the game, he envisioned Lewis rushing the quarterback, chasing a receiver 20 yards down field and making the tackle.

“That’s what Collin seemed like,” Paris said. “That’s the type of impact that he was having. The number of plays that he’s impacting was just ridiculous.”

One of the things that the Raptors liked about Murray-Boyles is that the intangibles he brings – particularly his defensive effort – should give him a steady floor as an NBA player. But perhaps his ceiling is higher than some scouts and some teams in the draft imagined – his architype, as a player without a definitive NBA position or reliable jumper, made him one of the most polarizing prospects in the class. 

The argument Paris makes is that a player who relies on, say, the three-point shot to help a team win is only as good as his percentage, which will vary on any given night. A player like Murray-Boyles, who can impact the game in a multitude of different ways, should bring less variance, especially because his greatest attributes are controllable and repeatable.

And with the focus being on his defence, perhaps people are sleeping on what he can bring offensively. Murray-Boyles has spent his first off-season as a pro fine-tuning his shooting mechanics and getting as many reps as possible. He started his pre-draft process a couple weeks earlier than most prospects. Recently, he’s been in California working with trainer and shooting coach Olin Simplis, who’s long list of former and current NBA clients includes league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Last week, Murray-Boyles played in a pickup game with several veteran players, including reigning Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley and one of the best shooters of all time in Klay Thompson – all of them represented by the same agency. Toronto’s rookie splashed a couple of threes, caught a lob pass from Thompson, and set the future Hall of Famer and long-time Warriors guard up in the corner with a behind-the-back pass in transition.

“Collin is a bona fide scorer if he wants to be,” said Sessions, currently an assistant coach for the women’s team at her alma mater, South Carolina, where she works closely with Murray-Boyles’ girlfriend, star forward Chloe Kitts. “It’s not as pretty as everybody wants it to look. Collin isn’t showboating. He understands the right shots for himself, he gets to his left hand, he can get to his pullup, he can get to his three… I think him going to the Raptors and the staff that they’ve got over there, they’re going to pull it out of him.”

As you might expect, Murray-Boyles lists making an NBA All-Defensive Team and winning Defensive Player of the Year among his long-term goals in the league. However, he clarifies that he’s not looking to get typecast. 

He wants to be known for his defence, but not just for his defence. It’s become a major part of his identity, but those that know him and his game the best are confident that there’s more to unlock. If they’re wrong, if he never develops a reliable jump shot, if his passing chops don’t translate to an NBA-style offence, he still has a baseline skill that should be appealing to most teams. There will always be a role for a player that loves to defend and does it at a high level. That’s a good place to start.

But for Murray-Boyles, it’s just that: a starting point, a foundation on which to build.  

“Every first-year player has to find something that they can contribute immediately,” he said. “That’s how you can grow. That’s something I’m trying to do, find that one thing I’m good at, which is defence – on the ball, off the ball, just being somebody that my team can rely on to get stops and disrupt offences. I feel like that’s something that makes a rookie successful and that’s what I’m going to do.”