After missing a couple of games due to injury, Keegan Murray made his return to the Sacramento Kings' lineup just in time to get stomped by the Clippers. While he played perfectly fine, Murray still has a lot of room to improve, particularly given the paycheck he's getting from the team.
During the first half of the Kings' faceoff with the Pistons on December 23, Murray left the game early due to a mild calf strain. It was the last thing Sacramento fans wanted to see as Murray had already missed a significant portion of the season due to a preseason thumb injury and subsequent surgery.
Fortunately, the calf strain was as mild as advertised, and Murray only ended up missing two games. Unfortunately, the game he returned for was a 41-point loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. It was a nasty punctuation mark on a terrible year for the Kings.
Murray played reasonably well, finishing with 11 points, two rebounds, one assist, and one block. That's an okay stat line for a comeback game, but not what fans want to see from the person the Kings have designated as their star player and the face of the upcoming rebuild.
The Kings need Keegan Murray to find another gear
For Sacramento, the problem is that Murray's numbers last night get worse the harder you look at them. He shot four for 13 from the field, giving him a percentage of 30.8%. Things were even worse from the three-point line. He went one for four, which is just 25% from beyond the arc.
Again, Murray gets the benefit of the doubt, being that he's back from a two-game injury absence. Still, his previous outing wasn't much better. He only played half the game before leaving injured, but he was only shooting 25% from the field before his untimely departure.
It's possible that he would have warmed up and gotten rolling in the second half, but that doesn't seem likely. The Kings have put a lot of eggs in the Keegan Murray basket. That means they need him to start putting out an All-Star level performance on a regular basis.
In their recent win over the Rockets, Murray dropped 26 points on nine of 14 shooting from the field. That's honestly the bare minimum for him. While it seems unfair to have that level of expectations, Keegan is at the center of their upcoming rebuild and he's going to have to play like it.