The top pick in the upcoming 2016 NBA Draft is, by all accounts, a two-player debate between LSU’s Ben Simmons and Duke’s Brandon Ingram.
But that’s not how Kitchener, Ont., native Jamal Murray sees it. The breakout star freshman believes he deserves to be the top pick, and declared himself the best player in the draft after an impressive workout out for the Boston Celtics earlier this week. Murray, who averaged 20 points per game as a first-year player at Kentucky, breaking the school’s rookie scoring record in the process, wowed those in attendance by besting fellow Canadian Kyle Wiltjer in the Celtics’ shooting drill the team puts its draft prospects through. From ESPN’s Chris Forsberg:
But members of the Boston Celtics organization, perhaps trying to test Jamal Murray’s mettle, alerted him that he was within striking distance of a team record during Wednesday’s pre-draft workout.
Murray, a 6-foot-5 guard out of Kentucky, then calmly drained eight of his final 10 3-point attempts, finishing with 79 makes out of 100 and besting the Brad Stevens-era pre-draft record of 77, set earlier this spring by Gonzaga’s Kyle Wiltjer.
“I believe I’m the best player in the draft,” Murray told reporters after the workout, “but every team needs what they need.”
It’s easy to look at Simmons and Ingram, both ultra-athletic wing players with tremendous size and a versatile two-way skill-set, and understand why they are, in some order, 1-2 on virtually every draft board. But Murray might be on to something.
It can be hard to quantify (let those jaw-dropping freshman scoring numbers attempt to do so) but there’s undoubtedly something special about the 20 year-old. In this profile I wrote ahead of the NCAA Tournament, I outlined the natural ability and competitive drive that made Murray a standout from his first day on the Toronto-area basketball scene. But in speaking to Murray, I was impressed by how much he had gone out of his way to carve out his own identity as a basketball player.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1FcEAJ-6Ok
One popular practice in assessing a prospect’s potential is to find a comparison for him, an NBAer with a similar game and career trajectory. In Murray’s case, that’s incredibly difficult— and that’s by design. “Everybody’s copying somebody else now,” Murray told me. “Nobody has their own style. Growing up I always wanted to create my own.”
His own coach at Kentucky, John Calipari, wasn’t familiar with that style, and it took nearly the whole season until he figured out how to best play to his star guard’s strengths. It’s a challenge whatever team selects Murray at the end of the month will have face as well, but the more I think about it, the more I believe he’s the kind of rare talent worth designing a game plan around. I can see him stepping onto an NBA court and contributing right away as a dangerous gunner off the bench.
The knock on on Murray is that he didn’t demonstrate the pure point skills to lead scouts and GMs to believe he can run an NBA offense (at least not right away), and subsequently there are also questions about whether or not he has the size to log heavy minutes at shooting guard at the NBA-level. The first concern is legitimate—Murray, playing mostly off the ball, averaged more turnovers than assists in his lone college season— though it’s extremely doubtful a team will draft Murray with the expectations that he’ll run the point from Day One. The questions about his size seem less significant by the day, as the NBA’s backcourts are getting smaller and smaller.
Murray, who was touted as a sleeper no.1 pick according to a report out of Philadelphia last week (the 76ers own the top pick), is not an easy prospect to gauge. He has noticeable flaws, yet has also exhibited an elite knack for scoring that no player in the draft, save for perhaps Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield, can match. The Celtics, who own the 3rd overall pick, are in desperate need of help in that department, and it will be interesting to see how much Murray’s workout will persuade them to add another guard to an already crowded backcourt. If Boston passes, don’t expect him to fall further than fifth, where the Minnesota Timberwolves choose, a scenario that would pair Canada’s two greatest NBA prospects of this generation, Murray and Andrew Wiggins. Dare to dream.
