True identity
Murray looks closer to reaching his goal to become complete point guard
Midway through the third quarter in Oklahoma City on Tuesday, Spurs guard Lonnie Walker IV thought he had a clean look at a corner 3-pointer.
He didn’t. OKC’S Darius Bazley arrived in time to harass Walker into a misfire.
A few possessions later, Walker had a better open look but did something he would come to regret. He flinched. Not long after passing up the second shot, Walker heard a familiar voice behind him: “Man, shoot the dang ball,” it said. Walker did not have to turn around to know that voice belonged to Spurs point guard Dejounte Murray.
“When I don’t take open shots, nine times out of 10 it’s going to be him that’s on my ass,” Walker said.
This is the latest step in the maturation of Murray, a 24-year-old in his fifth professional season being fitted daily with the many hats of an NBA point guard. Heading into Thursday’s game against Houston at the AT&T Center, Murray is averaging 16.2 points, 5.3 assists and seven rebounds — all career-high levels.
This season he has been part team leader, part coach and part camp counselor. He is, at times, a scorer or a distributor. He aims to always be a defender.
“I take pride in being a true point guard,” Murray said. “I know this league is about a lot of point guards scoring 30 or 40. It kind of takes away from the ones who are true point guards.”
To the Spurs’ been-there, donethat veterans, Murray is still one of the team’s callow kids. To the ballooning cast of newbies younger than he is, Murray is a wizened sage.
“He is a leader at heart,” said the 22-year-old Walker, “and I think that is his best attribute.”
Still, it has been a painful and painstaking path to get to this point
for Murray, the 29th pick in the 2016 draft out of Washington.
He appeared in only 38 NBA games as a 20-year-old rookie in 2016-17 but took the Spurs’ reins in the playoffs after Tony Parker suffered a devastating knee injury in the Western Conference semifinals against the Rockets.
Though Parker returned the following season, Murray was handed the future Hall of Famer’s starting job midway through the 2017-18 campaign.
Then came October 2018, when Murray suffered a devastating knee injury of his own in a preseason game — also against the Rockets — and missed the entire 2018-19 season.
That did not stop the Spurs from giving Murray a four-year, $64-million extension before he had played a single regular-season game on his surgically repaired knee.
“That’s probably the toughest thing, but I think he’s generally in a great mindset,” guard Patty Mills said. “You can see it in his face. You can see it in his eyes, the level of commitment he obviously has to the team.”
When Parker arrived as a teenager in 2001, it was as a shootfirst, ask-questions-later kind of point guard.
Coach Gregg Popovich’s challenge was to nudge Parker a bit closer to what the coach calls the John Stockton end of the point guard spectrum: Don’t give up the scoring, Popovich told Parker, but you have to get teammates involved, too.
Though Murray did not quite come ready-made with Parker’s scoring chops, Popovich’s approach has been similar.
“It’s a very analogous situation,” Popovich said. “He’s got to find everybody else quicker, and he will.”
Popovich began Murray’s education with film recommendations.
“He would tell me, ‘Go watch (Chris Paul), go watch Tony,’ ” Murray said. “‘Go watch Russell Westbrook, how he brings energy even if he misses 100 shots in a row.’ ”
Murray spent the pandemicplagued offseason in San Antonio, working out almost daily with assistant coaches Becky Hammon, Mitch Johnson and Will Hardy on point-guard skills and decision making.
It is perhaps no coincidence over the first three-plus weeks of the season, Murray has turned in some of the best games of his life. There was his first career tripledouble, with 11 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists in a Dec. 26 win over Toronto.
Two games later, Murray had a career-best 29 points in a defeat against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers.
In Saturday’s victory in Minnesota, Murray matched a career high with 14 rebounds to go with 22 points.
Murray has scored in double digits in 10 of the Spurs’ 11 games this season, the only blemish coming via a four-point dud in a Jan. 3 loss to Utah in which he missed 12 of 13 shots.
“He’s not a natural scorer type,” Popovich said. “He’s not what you’d call a ‘shooter’ shooter yet, but his 3-point shot has really improved. He’s got that crossover 2-pointer that is really solid. He’s got the ability to drive it.”
Murray is also beginning to harness his speed, which has been both a blessing and a curse when it comes to fulfilling all the duties of an NBA point guard.
“He is totally unselfish,” Popovich said. “It’s just when you are going to the rim at the speed he goes, sometimes it’s hard to find people.”
Down the stretch in a 112-102 victory in OKC on Tuesday, Murray put the whole package together. The Spurs ran the same play about a dozen times in the second half. Murray made a different read on almost all of them.
“And it was almost always the right read,” Popovich said.
The Spurs got consecutive key baskets in the fourth quarter when Murray read the same pickand-pop with Lamarcus Aldridge in different ways.
The first resulted in an open jumper for Aldridge. The second in an open jumper for Murray.
Asked if he could have handled the same situation earlier in his career, as well or at all, Murray smiled.
“It would have been hard,” he said.
Those who have watched Murray over the past five years have seen this coming. Coaches and teammates have seen Murray try on point guard hats until he found what fits.
“The bigger picture for me has always been to be willing to learn, be willing to work and just grow every year,” Murray said. “It’s a journey, and I am going to continue to grow.”