Murray answering Brown, Kings’ offensive rebounding call in Year 3

Murray answering Brown, Kings’ offensive rebounding call in Year 3 originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SACRAMENTO – All anyone could talk about after the Kings’ 122-107 win over the Toronto Raptors on Wednesday night was the growth of their rebounding machine.

No, not Domantas Sabonis.

Entering the 2024-25 NBA season, Kings coach Mike Brown emphasized the importance of offensive rebounds. Eight games into the season, only two players have accepted the challenge and answered the call.

To no surprise, Sabonis is one of them. Third-year forward Keegan Murray is the other.

“I mean, Keegan was a monster on the other end of the floor,” Brown said postgame. “Seven offensive rebounds – I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like it. Every time he got another one, I was amazed.

“He is the epitome of what it means to crash. He does a heck of a job.”

Murray finished Wednesday’s win with 22 points on 9-of-17 shooting from the field and 3 of 8 from 3-point range, with 12 rebounds, three assists and one block in 35 minutes. It marked his fourth double-double of the season – already matching his four double-doubles during his rookie 2021-22 season. He had eight last season.

He had seven offensive boards. Toronto as a team had eight.

“Yeah. I mean, we’re one of the smaller teams in the league, so whenever I can just fly and use my athleticism to go up and get a rebound, I just go and see what happens,” Murray said.

“I’ve gotten stronger, so that’s helped a lot. I mean, my brother in Portland just kind of flies and gets rebounds. So just watching him and things like that just helped me kind of figure out that. Just flying, get a rebound. And if you do that, the ball is going to award you in some way.”

And it has. His aggressiveness of crashing the glass certainly is noticeable, and it’s paying off.

As a rookie, Murray averaged 4.6 rebounds (1.1 offensive, 3.5 defensive). Last season, he boosted that number to 5.5 boards per game (1.4 offensive, 4.1 defensive).

Through eight games this season, he’s averaging 8.3 rebounds – 2.9 offensive and 5.4 defensive.

While it’s a credit to him gaining weight…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/murray-answering-brown-kings-offensive-072524640.html

Author : NBC Sports BayArea

Publish date : 2024-11-07 07:25:00

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