The Raptors don’t need Collin Murray-Boyles to become a bomber overnight. They do, however, need the shot to come along enough that defenses can’t ignore him.
That’s the real pressure point in Toronto’s frontcourt right now. Sandro Mamukelashvili is gone to the Los Angeles Lakers in free agency, Allen Graves arrives as a rookie who hit 41.3% of his 3s at Santa Clara but still has to prove that touch carries over to the NBA, Kyle Anderson attempted just eleven 3-pointers last season, Jakob Poeltl doesn’t shoot from deep, and Scottie Barnes is a 30.1% 3-point shooter for his career. Murray-Boyles wasn’t exactly stretching the floor as a rookie either, going 17-50 from deep for 34%.
The Raptors are banking on real growth there. He may never be the kind of player who happily fires away off the dribble or lets it fly from way beyond the arc with the game hanging in the balance. But Toronto needs him to be comfortable enough to punish defenses on catch-and-shoot looks, especially when Barnes collapses the paint and has to kick the ball back out.
Raptors reporter Michael Grange wrote in a July 8 Sportsnet article that “There has been a lot of work on Murray-Boyles’ shooting, as well, and Simovic-whose regular-season role is as the Raptors’ lead development coach-is optimistic that he will eventually emerge as a reliable catch-and-shoot threat from beyond the three-point line, though he cautions it’s a lot to expect in one five-month off-season.”
That kind of development would matter because Murray-Boyles already brings plenty on the other end. He’s an incredibly versatile defender, and if the offense starts to catch up, the fit alongside Barnes gets even cleaner.
Toronto is clearly intrigued by the idea of building around those two and the defense they can anchor together for years. The easier Murray-Boyles makes life on offense, the more realistic that vision becomes.
There’s at least one early chance to see where that work stands. The Raptors face the Celtics’ summer league team on July 10, and that matchup will offer the first game-action look at Murray-Boyles’ 3-point progress.
The bigger picture around Murray-Boyles is just as encouraging for Toronto. He missed a chunk of last season with a thumb injury, but when he was available, he was effective and logged the eighth-most minutes in the Raptors’ rotation.
In the playoffs, his numbers jumped across the board, including his playing time. He ended up averaging more minutes than Poeltl and Mamukelashvili and was usually on the floor for 26 or more minutes.
That level of trust from Darko Rajakovic in Murray-Boyles’ first NBA playoffs already pointed toward a larger role in year two. Raptors assistant coach Ivo Simovic, who is leading the team’s entry in the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League, made that even clearer in Grange’s reporting.
“‘We need him to play a lot for us,’ says Raptors assistant coach Ivo Simovic, who is the head coach for the team’s entry in the NBA’s Las Vegas Summer League, with the Raptors’ first game coming Friday on campus at UNLV. ‘He needs to be able to play with Kawhi (Leonard), with Scottie, with Jak (Poeltl), with all those guys. We need him to play 30-plus minutes, and to do that, you cannot be one-dimensional,’” wrote Grange.
Poeltl is still on the roster and remains projected to start at center, but Murray-Boyles has a path to a much bigger workload anyway. Poeltl has not played more than 57 games in any of the last three seasons and appeared in just 46 this past year, so chances will open up.
And in plenty of matchups, Murray-Boyles’ switchability and disruptive defense may be the better answer than Poeltl’s size. Even if he comes off the bench, he could still end up playing more minutes than the veteran on many nights.
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