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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 over the offseason and bulking up to get stronger, it’s also a sentiment to his ability to listen to what his coach is asking of him – which is a lot in Year 3.
“Man, you’re 100 percent correct. I ask him to do a whole hell of a lot,” Brown said of Murray. “He’s taken the best player on the other team a lot of times. The best big wing player. So I’m asking him to do that. I’m asking him to score. I’m asking him to run the floor and shoot 3s. I ask him to create – and then he’s got to rebound. Not just defensive rebound, but he’s got to offensive rebound. And that’s every possession, every single game, and he just keeps trying to do it.
“You can see as he gets older and more mature, you can see his size really starting to be an advantage, because he’s quick for a guy his size. And not that he’s just big, but he’s also strong. And every year he plays in this league, he’s just going to get stronger and smarter. So now with the strength catching up with the size, and the intellect catching up with the size, he’s turning into a monster for us in a lot of different categories – and we need him to, especially on the glass.”
Brown also lauded Murray’s “unbelievable” work ethic, recognizing how much time and work he put in this past offseason.
And as just 24 years old, Brown believes the “sky is the limit” for Murray.
Sabonis, who finished the game with a perfect triple-double with 17 points on 6-of-6 shooting, and 11 rebounds and 13 assists, is in his third season of serving as a veteran presence to a 24-year-old Murray.
And like any good mentee, Murray is following the rebounding expert’s footsteps.
Sabonis credited Murray’s ability to listen to Brown and applauded his hard work and competitive spirit.
The Lithuanian big man has dominated the league in rebounding alongside some other NBA greats, including three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić and four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.
But little did he know he might be having to share the rebounding throne with his own teammate. Is that something he’s OK with?
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he joked. “Today was fine, but maybe [only] some days.”