Collin Murray-Boyles and Jamal Shead revolutionize the Raptors’ future

The Toronto Raptors’ most recent era was defined from the transition to Scottie Barnes. He replaced Pascal Siakam, who replaced Kyle Lowry. In the grand scheme, the Raptors have found meaningful faces of the franchise. But beneath Barnes, the Raptors were, at least initially, unable to supplement the roster in ways that made sense. It’s not that they missed in the big picture. (Although, maybe.) But for years, the Raptors couldn’t hit around the margins. That ability defined the Lowry era, and then dried up in the Siakam era. It seemed, at least initially, that the Barnes era might see similar woeful roster building around the edges.

I wrote this in 2023:

The Toronto Raptors spent years pulling proverbial rabbits out of proverbial voids. A late-first-round draft pick joining the All-NBA team? Check. An undrafted player becoming an All Star? Yessir. A castaway point guard becoming one of the most important drivers of success in a decade? The foundation of it all. Such events constitute joy for fans and wins for teams. 

But watching Toronto’s 2023 (2024?) Summer League team has been an experience shockingly free of rabbits. It’s crucial to note that this is just Summer League. Losing Summer League games is a-ok! Good teams do it all the time. Good players can play poorly. But it’s also hard for players who will eventually be ready to play NBA minutes to not show some elements in Summer League against the sub-NBA-level competition. In that way, Summer League is also a valuable indicator about whether a team has found a free five-dollar bill, or the last beer, or something from nothing. If a team is going to find value where it generally wouldn’t, you should know it in Summer League. 

And for a team, things were stark. The Raptors drafted him prior to the 2021-22 season. In the combined drafts of 2021, 2022, and 2023, the Raptors found exactly one rotation player who remains on the team: Gradey Dick. The other 10 players are a who’s who of players who have not made their names in the league yet. (And Dick hasn’t really made his name yet either, to be fair.)

Then came the 2024 draft. Things changed instantaneously. The Raptors added Ja’Kobe Walter (19), Jonathan Mogbo (31), Jamal Shead (45), Ulrich Chomche (57), and Jamison Battle (undrafted). Talk about hitting around the edges. The following season saw Toronto add Collin Murray-Boyles (9), Alijah Martin (39), and Chucky Hepburn (undrafted). Now, of course, Murray-Boyles wasn’t drafted outside the first round or anything like that. But he has far outplayed the ninth overall draft slot to this point. And that’s surplus value regardless.

As a result of Toronto’s previous two drafts, it’s not an exaggeration to say that the entire Barnes era could be redeemed. Nothing is set in stone, but if you whiff on adding young, improving, cost-controlled players to a team for a star’s entire tenure, it will be a poor tenure. Virtually no player, no matter how talented, can survive team-building failures of that magnitude. (Exhibit A: Giannis Antetokounmpo.) And the Barnes era started out going down that road.

Until the Raptors veered right back on track. Shead and Murray-Boyles are, in my eyes, the two largest reasons why that’s the case.

Shead came into the league with one NBA-ready skill: quickness. He could jet past his defender with relative ease, which meant paint touches. The problem last season was that he couldn’t do much with those paint touches. He wasn’t much of a finisher in the paint, a shooter, or a passer. Really, the floater was his only weapon on the drive, and it was only middling at that. His defence didn’t translate from college. The Raptors were dramatically worse with him on the floor in his rookie season (to the extent that he had the second-worst on-off differential among all rotation players.)

Since then, Shead has been building his game piece by piece. It’s remarkable what he’s added since the start of his rookie season. He still isn’t much of a scorer on the drive, but he is such a brilliant passer that he’s weaponized his quickness in a dramatic way. He finds oodles of paint assists. He sprays the ball to shooters. He’s a home-run hitter as a passer. Among players with 30 or more games played, he leads the league in assist rate on drives. And he does it without seeing a whole lot of the ball; his assist-to-usage rate (defined loosely as frequency of assists as compared to how much one sees of the ball) leads the entire league, too.

That on its own would make him a valuable weapon. But his defence has started translating, as he’s become far better at staying in front of his man, able to weaponize his strength to bump players off their lines without fouling. His steal rate has jumped while his foul rate has dropped. He’s rebounding better. He fights back into plays very well. And, of course, he draws offensive fouls just about as well as anyone else in the league, having drawn 37 non-charge offensive fouls, second in the league. (He plays defence like Kyle Lowry, for real.)

His jumper is ticking upwards, one piece at a time. He’s passable above the break now, connecting on 34.4 percent from that zone, up from 31.5 percent last season.

He still has to sort out his finishing — or really any scoring from inside the arc. His jumper still has to improve. His defence has to go from good to great. But he’s already up to second on the team in on-off differential among rotation players this season (again: he was at second-last in his rookie season). He has plenty of room to grow. But he’s already massively outplaying his second-round rookie contract. He’s a winner, a leader, a closer.

I wrote this in a feature last season on Shead:

He knows whose defence his resembles. There’s a legacy here in Toronto. Impossible shoes to fill, and then an impossibly long distance to march, before he arrives at that destination…

Shead is probably not going to be a star, not like many of those spiritual predecessors.

I might have undershot it then. Shead has improved by leaps and bounds. His improvement changes the texture of Toronto’s future. But he’s not the only one.

If Shead is Toronto’s heart, Murray-Boyles is its musculature. The six-foot-seven big is enormous for his miniscule (for a big) stature. He has huge hands, a huge wingspan, strength in every fingertip. He tips away mountains of balls on the defensive end, up to 20th in the league in deflections per 36 minutes, and first on the Raptors. He came into the league somewhat overmatched, surviving on a hot streak from behind the arc, among all things. Then his rebounding slowly came around, then his transition game. I wrote this in early December:

Murray-Boyles has made himself into a tidy rotation player. There’s still meat on the bone, of course. Much of his game will join him on NBA courts eventually. Driving the basketball should eventually become a major component of his offence. His screening will be more impactful. He’ll grab defensive rebounds too. All that will come.

Much of that stuff has come and then some. He’s exploding as a defender, locking up all five positions in actuality. He has been the spine of Toronto’s defence, leading rotation players in defensive on-off differential. He’s one of the best offensive rebounders in the league. He runs a nifty pick and roll on the offensive end, passing well on the short roll or galloping all the way to the rim for finishes. He is growing as a handoff hub, as a screener, as a move-the-chains decision maker offensively. His driving is ticking up. It’s all improving, all at once. He has fashioned himself into an integral player on a team that has a fair amount of veteran talent right at his own position — and he’s done it as a rookie. For more, our own Samson Folk just detailed how he’s thriving in the league.

Murray-Boyles is already an exceptional defender. Not for a rookie. Just, full-stop, he’s flat-out fantastic. He could grow into an All Star, perhaps more. That’s the type of prospect he has grown into.

Between the two of them, Shead and Murray-Boyles give Toronto a vision of a different future. Different futures. They defend like fiends, run the ball, and pass with precision. They win around the edges, modern little-things kings. Sure, they aren’t terrific shooters, but they’ve both improved during their tenures as Raptors. They’re going and growing. They ooze promise. And they both have their own on-court relationships with Barnes, the definer of the era. Shead finds him as a cutter, as a screener, in transition. He is great at passing to Barnes in advantageous spots. Murray-Boyles has become a two-headed defensive hydra with Barnes, with both switching, protecting the rim, forcing turnovers, and generally eating opponents’ lunches.

Both youngsters are ready to help win games for the Raptors now, of course. Both play integral roles on a team that is surprisingly competitive, fourth in the East, and both have positive plus-minus marks. But they have tantalizing futures. They represent wins, both in the present and the future.

And they’re not the only ones. Walter has popped this season. Martin has had incredible moments. Battle’s play is begging for more minutes. Shead and Murray-Boyles are just two of a group of youngsters who are changing the Raptors’ future in real time. The front office started to win around the edges again. And as a result, this season is already bearing fruit.

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