TORONTO – Collin Murray-Boyles is saving the Toronto Raptors and he’s doing it in more ways than one.
In the immediate term, the 20-year-old rookie has helped turn the momentum of his first ever playoff series and breathe new life into Toronto’s season. The youngest player on the team has been one of its best and most reliable contributors through three games, with his playing time, point production, and rebound totals going up in each contest.
With the Raptors in a 2-0 series hole and facing a must-win at home on Thursday, Murray-Boyles was one of the catalysts behind a 126-104 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. His 22 points were the most by a first-year player in franchise postseason history. His impact at this level and at this stage of his young career continues to impress.
That nobody seems especially surprised by it should tell you something about the player and his game. He was built for this.
“I came off the court and looked up, and he had only eight rebounds, but it felt like he had 20 [points] and 20 [boards],” said Raptors forward Jamison Battle, another Game 3 hero. “He doesn’t play like a rookie at all, and I’d be shocked if he wasn’t first-team all-rookie. What he does and the impact that he has on the team is just unreal.”
“He is a warrior, to be honest with you,” head coach Darko Rajakovic added. “He’s stepping on the floor and fighting and giving it his all. I thought that he was ultra-aggressive, and he needed to be. He had a high-level performance, and I [attribute] that to the power of his will.”
But taking the macro view, Murray-Boyles has completely changed the organization’s outlook. With every weak-side block, every emphatic rebound, every put-back, hustle play or thunderous slam dunk, he is raising the team’s long-term ceiling.
And to say that they needed to find a player like that would be an understatement.
When the Raptors traded OG Anunoby and then Pascal Siakam in the winter of 2023-24, they closed the book on the post-championship era and entered a rebuild. The mission, for all intents and purposes, was to get their hands on high-level, franchise-altering young talent via the draft, commonly known as tanking.
That summer, their first-round pick (the eighth-overall selection) was conveyed to the San Antonio Spurs as part of the (regrettable, in hindsight) Jakob Poeltl trade. In February of 2025, they traded for Brandon Ingram, effectively signalling an early end to the rebuild.
First, they would take one last shot at hitting it big in the lottery, but despite finishing the campaign with the seventh-best odds of landing the top pick, Duke phenom Cooper Flagg, they dropped two spots.
If everything went according to plan, with Ingram set to debut in 2025-26, this would be their last trip to the lottery for the foreseeable future. After punting the previous two seasons, this ninth-overall pick was all they would have to show for their expedited rebuild.
They absolutely needed to nail it.
Imagine, for a moment, that the 2025 draft went differently for the Raptors. Tre Johnson, Jeremiah Fears and Egor Demin went to sixth through eighth to the Washington Wizards, New Orleans Pelicans, and Brooklyn Nets, respectively. They each showed flashes as rookies and averaged double figures in scoring this past season.
Still, those three players recorded 1.5 win shares, combined. For context, Murray-Boyles ranked fifth in a loaded rookie class with 4.0 win shares – trailing Kon Knueppel, Ryan Kalkbrenner, VJ Edgecombe, and Dylan Harper, and was just ahead of Flagg.
The player who went right after Murray-Boyles, 7-foot-1 Sudanese centre Khaman Maluach, who many Raptors fans were clamouring for and some mock drafts had going to Toronto at eight, put up a 0.8 win shares in 46 mostly underwhelming games for the Phoenix Suns.
While Murray-Boyles was a polarizing prospect going into the draft, likely because he was in between traditional NBA positions and didn’t have a jumper to fall back on, the Raptors believed his intangibles gave him a sturdy floor. A smart, high-energy, defensive-minded big man that could guard multiple positions – at worst, he profiled as a solid NBA rotation player.
But they also saw his upside, and now, it’s hard to miss.
Talent evaluators across the league have been encouraged by how well Murray-Boyles’ game has translated to the playoffs and the poise he’s shown at his age, while marvelling at how far along he is as a defender. Last week, he compared his brand of physical, instinctual defence to that of Draymond Green and talked about studying the former Defensive Player of the Year winner, four-time NBA champion, and future hall-of-famer.
That tracks.
The Raptors forced 22 turnovers in Thursday’s series-saving win, the most Cleveland has committed since acquiring James Harden in February. Murray-Boyles was on the court for 15 of them and 50-50 balls are more like 70-30 balls when he’s out there.
He has a nose for the ball. It’s something that you can’t teach.
“Really just not being afraid of the moment,” said Murray-Boyles, asked why his game has translated so well to the postseason. “This is a really, really good team we’re playing. [They] have one of my favorite players on that team (Harden), but it’s just not being scared of who we’re going up against and really just taking it to them, trying to be as aggressive as possible.”
How good can he become? An all-league defender? That’s a reasonable expectation, given what he can do on that end as a 20-year-old. All-Star, All-NBA, or better? That will depend on how quickly and how much his offensive game develops. He’s already made notable strides.
With more confidence in his role and trust from his coaches and teammates as the season went on, Murray-Boyles showed an improved ability to attack and finish at the rim. He’s attempted 21 shots in the restricted area through three playoff games, which ranks third across the league – only Jalen Johnson (22) and Karl-Anthony Towns (22) have taken more.
He’s hit 17 of those shots.
Of the 14 players who have attempted 15 shots from that range, only Jaden McDaniels (15-for-17), Evan Mobley (16-for-19), and Ayo Dosunmu (15-for-18) are shooting better than his 81 per cent.
Cleveland’s bigs, Mobley and Jarrett Allen, have been conceding the 12-to-17-foot jumper, which Murray-Boyles is also proving that he can knock down. Naturally, the Raptors are excited to see what he can do with a full NBA off-season under their guidance.
In time, if he can extend his range – he hit a respectable 34 per cent of his 50 three-point attempts as a rookie after going 9-for-39 (23 per cent) in two collegiate seasons at South Carolina – the sky is the limit.
By trading for Ingram and expediting the rebuilding process, the fear was that the Raptors ran the risk of freezing themselves in mediocrity – raising their floor without drastically raising the ceiling, while tied to an expensive core and with only Barnes as a means of significant internal growth.
Hitting on your lottery picks has never been more crucial, with the team building restrictions of the new CBA and a starting five that will make $163 million next season, or 99 per cent of the league’s projected salary cap. Murray-Boyles is under contract for three more seasons at an average annual salary of $7.5 million, and he’ll be a restricted free agent after that.
In Barnes and Murray-Boyles, the Raptors have seemingly found their front court of the future, and it’s delivering in the present. Barnes was spectacular on Thursday, becoming the first player in franchise history to record at least 30 points, 10 assists and 5 rebounds in a playoff game, while serving as the primary defender on Harden (who had his worst game of the series).
Poeltl continued to start at the centre position, and was better in Game 3, but played 18 minutes to Murray-Boyles’ 28, and it was the rookie who was on the floor in crunch time.
Building around the Barnes and Murray-Boyles duo could be challenging with some of the long-term contracts the team has locked itself into, Poeltl included. Either of those guys would be undersized as a full-time centre and, as it stands, neither player is a reliable floor spacer.
But having two elite defenders that can guard one through five and impose their will on both sides of the ball, each of them under the age of 25, is not a bad place to start. This series is starting to get interesting, and the future may be brighter than we thought.
