Cooper Flagg! Dylan Harper! Ace Bailey! The order of the top few picks in this year's NBA Draft seems to have a popular consensus, but who follows is a little more unclear. (Here's our 2025 NBA Draft Big Board though if you're interested).
There is no perfect prospect; there are plenty of advantages and disadvantages to whatever choice a team might make when their turn is up. Near the top of the draft, the idea is usually to take the best player available. That shifts more and more toward fit the later and later the pick is.
I say all this because I want to talk about Collin Murray-Boyles. This feels like something people on this site like to do: Talk about surprise stars. To me, Murray-Boyles is the reach you make for fit because his fit fits so many fitty fituations.
Why Collin Murray-Boyles is flying under the radar in the 2025 NBA Draft
So why isn’t Collin Murray-Boyles getting more draft buzz? It mostly comes down to one thing: his jumper.
Maybe you don’t care about outside shooting. Or maybe you think you help him build that skill up. (I mean look at Kawhi Leonard’s college shooting! It wasn’t good. His shooting turned out to be really good though. Has that happened multiple times since? No. But it could happen for your favorite team!)
CMB’s outside shooting numbers weren’t great, averaging only 26.5 percent from three and 70.7 percent from the line. However, his shot doesn’t look broken mechanically. Mechanics don’t mean everything, but the closer your stroke is to the ideal, the better chance you have at becoming a serviceable shooter.
And his shooting kind of needs to improve because, at 6-foot-7, he is a bit on the short side to be the non-shooting big anchoring a defense full-time. That is not to say I don’t think he’d be able to play the five on a small-ball unit. Eventually. His defense, despite his size, was arguably the best of this rookie class. He’s just going to be giving up a lot of height and weight on a nightly basis.
Collin Murray-Boyles' strengths, weaknesses and NBA fit
That said, he had a -8.2 (which is good) on/off defensive swing in his time on the court and held his opponents to 38.3 percent on field goal attempts, as Eamon Cassels wrote here.
But he finishes like a top big, leading the SEC in field goal percentage at 58.6 percent despite a poor surrounding cast by SEC measures. He excelled as a cutter, and while he’s not exactly an above-the-basket threat, he can do a little bit for you there as well.
All that stuff is great, but my favorite thing about him is what he does for his teammates. He is an excellent connector as a big, my favorite in this class. He has excellent IQ and vision. While this video doesn’t encompass all the excellent evidence of his feel, I feel like just watching a few highlights will give you a good vibe:
It just makes me happy. That’s the kind of basketball I like watching. Having that kind of passing touch on one end and being able to lock in on defense on the other is just a cool combination.
We like this guy here at FanSided. Other people seem to like him less than I/we do. Maybe that means I’m too high on him. I’m instead going to interpret it as I, in fact, am right and he is a sleeper.
The end.