It might have been a mere NBA Summer League game Wednesday, but there 22-year-old Keegan Murray was, first hitting a contested pull-up jumper from midrange to start the contest, then showing his full arsenal shortly after that.
There was the authoritative block at the rim he rotated over to make a minute or two later, then the corner triple he drilled shortly after. There was the footwork, and the stepback three he put down over Heat rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr. There was the free-throw line jumper he lofted over not just one or two but three defenders, and still managed to knock down like a practice shot. After grabbing a defensive rebound one minute later, Murray took matters into his own hands again, taking advantage of a Miami defense that never picked him up in transition. As such, he looked around before pulling up from straight away, 25 feet out. Bullseye.
The latter play was exactly what Kings coach Mike Brown had implored Murray to do last season when he sees such opportunities: take the ball yourself, and make something happen.
Murray’s standout showing of 41 points and six triples in Sacramento’s contest was precisely what the Kings hoped to see from the forward. And speaking more broadly, it speaks to the sort of internal development that Sacramento—which added sharpshooting Euroleague MVP Sasha Vezenkov and guard Chris Duarte—will largely be banking on this coming season. The Kings, who broke their record-long 16-year NBA playoff drought last season, were one of the healthiest teams in the league in 2022-23. They’ll be bringing back all five starters from a unit that logged a league-high 900 minutes together—the most in the association by more than 150 minutes. Monte McNair, the team’s lead executive, is betting on the fact that another year in Brown’s system with this set of current teammates will help the team take the next step after a hard-fought first-round loss to the experienced Warriors.
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To the frustration of some fans, who wanted to see Sacramento go for a wing upgrade, free agent Harrison Barnes was brought back on a three-year, $54 million deal. Power forward Trey Lyles will be back at two years and $16 million. And then there was the biggest news: that the club and All-NBA center Domantas Sabonis agreed to an extension of four years worth up to $195 million in new money, bringing the potential value of his contract to five years and $217 million. (Kevin Huerter’s current deal is up in 2026, as is All-NBA guard De’Aaron Fox’s.)
No one can fault the Kings, after experiencing their first success in more than a decade and a half, for not wanting to fix something that isn’t broken. They won 48 games, so even if they were bounced in the opening round, this was a team that, out of nowhere, managed to break the NBA record for offensive efficiency in a season. The relatively young club was already fast during the regular season, then cranked things far faster in the postseason to have the quickest tempo in the sport during that time. The offense, led by Fox, makes life impossible for defenses with endless handoffs and counters from Sabonis, who, scoring aside, is the second-best passing big man in the sport. He’s a maestro at bullying opposing players with screens, and buys unfathomable space for Sacramento shooters as they flare out and run off his shoulder.
Interestingly, aside from picking up 22-year-old Kessler Edwards’s option, there hasn’t been an overwhelming amount of focus shown yet to the defensive side, where the Kings were tied for eighth-worst in the league, surrendering 116 points per 100 possessions. That area seems like the one most worth trying to improve; particularly after a year where Sacramento seemed to benefit from being just a bit better, and more cohesive with few very injuries, during a season where parity thrived throughout the association. Then again, the Nuggets just won their first championship while sporting a league-average defense during the regular season. And with the right tweaks from Brown and potential roster pickups down the line, who’s to say the Kings aren’t capable of moving closer to the middle of the pack on that end of the floor?
Either way—even if Sacramento doesn’t improve at all on defense—it’s different to see the Kings coming off a winning campaign, and, in stepping back, it’s not surprising that they’d want to squeeze as much internal growth out of this group as possible first before shaking things up.
