This draft day take about Keegan Murray was so laughably bad

With the 2024-25 NBA season nearing its inception point, we are entering the third NBA season since the 2022 NBA Draft. And for the Sacramento Kings, that means that we are about to begin Keegan Murray's junior season in the NBA.

Time is a funny thing. It makes us forget what we once thought to be 100% true. That is why it is important to reflect on our past takes and acknowledge that we were wrong.

If you're following what we're saying here, the 2022 NBA Draft contains an example like this involving Murray. Right now, there is no one in Sacramento, or anywhere around the league, for that matter, who doesn't think Murray is a good player and a good pick by the Kings.

The funny thing is, when it initially happened, most people laughed at the Kings. Not because they didn't think he had talent, but because they drafted him while now Detroit Pistons' guard Jaden Ivey was still on the board.

There were even takes like this circulating around the Twitter airwaves:

Now, here we are, two years into their careers, and very few folks (if anyone) are arguing with the Kings' decision to pick Murray over Ivey.

A quick glance at their counting stats may not say much – Murray has averaged 13.7 PPG/5.0 RPG/1.4, while Ivey is at 15.8 PPG/3.7 RPG/4.5 APG. But if you look deeper into the data, you see who the real head honcho is among the two.

For what my money is worth, the best publicly available one-number metric on the market is Estimated Plus-Minus (EPM) because it blends box score data with plus-minus and tracking data. This statistic can be found on the website Dunks & Threes.  

According to Dunks & Threes, Murray has had a higher EPM than Ivey in each of their first two seasons, including last season when he finished in the 86th percentile in the metric while Ivey placed in the 61st.

On top of that, Murray has also shown signs of shining when the lights are brightest. Murray has already played nearly 200 minutes across seven games in the playoffs. Ivey, on the other hand, hasn't participated in a meaningful game since entering the NBA.

Murray is also the more efficient scorer (58.1% true shooting compared to Ivey's 53.2%), a better defender (3.6% stock rate compared to Ivey's 2.8%), and a much better role player than Ivey (neither of them are necessarily on track to become on-ball stars). To top it all off, Murray (24 years and one month) isn't even that much older than Ivey (22 years and seven months)!

No matter how you slice it, Murray is the better player now, and from where we're standing, his future is also so much brighter. It looks like the Kings weren't being as dumb during the 2022 NBA Draft as some people originally thought.