Dejounte Murray has less than 80 minutes to his resume during his first NBA season, but don’t mistake his lack of use for an absence of faith. The San Antonio Spurs still seem to view him as a big piece of their future.
Per ESPN.com’s Michael Wright:
In 11 games with one start, Murray is averaging 1.3 points and 4.2 minutes. Murray currently sits at No. 4 in the point guard rotation behind Tony Parker, Patty Mills and Nicolas Laprovittola.
The Spurs still view Murray, potentially, as their point guard of the future, but they sent him down to the D-League because they need him to practice and play. Because of the overall age of the team and the way the schedule has fallen, the Spurs didn’t conduct a single practice between Nov. 7 and Dec. 12. That’s not conducive to rapid development for Murray.
“They sent me down here for a couple of games. I’m down here, trying to run a team and get to know these guys because they’re all hungry, too, to get to the NBA,” Murray said. “I’m just down here getting better. I’m a gym rat. I like being in the gym. I didn’t pout when I came down here. Every team is different. There are some rookies playing, a lot of rookies not playing. I’m just glad that I’m not playing and our team isn’t bad. Our team is good. I just turned 20 years old. I’m still learning and just waiting for my chance.”
Tony Parker, 34, has one year and around $15.5 million left on his contract after this season, and Patty Mills is speeding toward a lucrative payday in free agency this summer. So yes, the Spurs need to start giving some serious thought to who will be their floor general of the future.
Looking at the championship windows of LaMarcus Aldridge and Kawhi Leonard, we should expect the Spurs to kick around tires on the flurry of high-end point guards who hit the open market this summer—from Stephen Curry and Kyle Lowry, to Chris Paul and Jrue Holiday. But they’ll need to figure out how to manufacture max space first, and while the path to such spending power is ridiculously hard, poaching star free agents will be once the new collective bargaining agreement kicks in.
That makes Murray’s development super important, perhaps more so than most realize. The Spurs aren’t ones to throw their kiddies into the fire right away, so stints in the D-League and on the bench are to be expected. They can only hope this approach yields more gains than it has to this point for Kyle Anderson.
