The new parents would test their twins early on, placing pacifiers in their mouths upside-down. Kris would instantly flip his over while Keegan — whose name, Kenyon notes, means “little fiery one” and was chosen because of how active he was during the pregnancy — either didn’t notice or was completely unfazed. The twins were up and walking at nine and a half months. Four months after that, they beelined to basketball — flinging up the foam ball in their Little Tikes set. Both were athletic kids (played baseball and football), adept left-handed pitchers and “feared on the field,” respectively. It was when football switched to tackle in the fourth grade that Michelle, working in trauma and OR at a local hospital, pulled the twins out.
“I was, I would say, an unpopular parent for making that choice,” Michelle remembers. “Because their flag football team was really good. And they were just natural at playing quarterback, playing wide receiver. I had some parents, just like, let 'em play. I'm like, not this young.”
Michelle and Kenyon made it clear that Kris and Keegan were welcome to try football in their freshman year, or stick with baseball, or try any sport they wanted. Despite Kenyon’s own productive college basketball career at the University of Iowa — the former Mr. Basketball of Michigan is still 3rd in career steals for the Hawkeyes — the pair wanted to make sure their sons felt no pressure in making the best decision for themselves.
“Here in Iowa, the Murray last name is synonymous with basketball, and obviously people expected them to play basketball,” Kenyon says, “but we just wanted to make sure that they were balanced. You know, we wanted them to be kids, try everything.”
But the decision, like many in their lives up to their first year of college, was unanimous. Baseball season started in the spring and ran into summer, which meant it overlapped with basketball. The twins picked the latter, a decision that soon had them living up to their name.
Whereas Kris was more willing to do the little things on the floor, Keegan, his parents note, wasn’t always the biggest fan of defense. They agree that he was, as Kenyon puts it, “an emotional roller coaster.”
“The one thing that Michelle and I both pressed upon him was, you always respect the game. You always respect your opponent.” Kenyon says. “And there were moments where he didn't do that and he let his emotions run really high when it comes to, if he wasn't hitting shots he would go into a downward spiral and that would lead to him having more inconsistency.”
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is nicknamed the “City of Five Seasons.” It started as an advertising initiative — a local agency looked to come up with an identifier for the city, something to set it apart and make it a destination, while nodding at a resource that made it unique. Set on both sides of the Cedar River, the city was one of the biggest milling hubs in the United States, but a reference to that would be dated. Noticing how fast it was to commute around the city given its smaller size, they decided to highlight all the time its inhabitants saved as a benefit. The so-called fifth season, then, references a bonus season that allows people to slow down and appreciate the other four.
That surplus of time is evident when watching Keegan Murray play basketball.
His metronomic handle when coaxing defenders out to guard him at the arc so he can step back and have plenty of room to take (and make) a three. The running dribble-drives into the paint that end with a slow lift up to one leg and a finger roll to the rim. An ability to reach for the rock before it dips out of bounds with all the grace of a high-diver. The slow-mo fadeaways, pop-up blocks on the glass, even the lobs he’s met mid-air to convert, crushingly, to dunks look leisurely. Murray moves as if he’s been granted access to a time zone all his own.
“It’s really finding my spot on the team, finding what I’m good at, and being the best at that. With a new team, it’s different because you really don’t know what to expect,” Murray says of how he’s adapting to the NBA shortly after sitting down in a bright, quiet corner of the Sacramento Kings team facilities within the Golden 1 Center. He mentions the new coaching staff, including head coach Mike Brown, as well as a new training and front office staff. How all these new faces, personalities, and skills offer a kind of puzzle with pieces to put together in order to figure out what works. All of them while figuring out life in Sacramento on the fly.
“I think this is probably the perfect situation for me. To be in a new culture with other people that are going to be new along with myself. I think a lot of people are ready to get this thing rolling,” Murray says, a statement that might read loaded with impatience but, in his placid tones, only comes across as staidly sanguine.
That demeanor is just as evident off the floor. Murray, whether putting shots up on the Kings’ basilic and gleaming practice court or coaxed into telling his best dad jokes while flinging his long legs as casually as he can over a row of plush seats at the historic Crest Theatre, is quick to give a disarmingly self-effacing laugh. He’s easygoing, if a little shy. That part, his parents Michelle and Kenyon Murray confirm, was always there.
“I mean, from the day he was born,” Michelle Murray recalls over the phone with a chuckle that Kenyon, sharing the line, echoes, “Kristopher was born first and he came out, 'Wah, wah, wah!' Like, I'm here! And then one minute later, Keegan was born and he was like, ‘Eh,’ and then went back to sleep. I was like, ‘Is Keegan okay?’ And they're like, ‘Oh yeah, he's totally fine’."
by BILL DIFILIPPO // ASSOCIATE EDITOR
UPROXX STUDIOS
I was a kid who wore his emotions on his shoulders a little bit. It was difficult."
“I was a kid who wore his emotions on his shoulders a little bit,” Keegan admits of his game in high school. “It was difficult. Especially mentally, because if I missed five shots in a row, I probably wouldn’t shoot the next one, or would pass it off.”
Supporting and helping their sons develop different skill sets was important to Kenyon and Michelle. Their coach since fourth grade, Kenyon understood his boys were probably going to play together up through high school and wanted their skills to complement each other, but also work within a team. He drilled them on fundamentals. As their “dad slash coach,” he also recognized where their personalities would naturally make them more inclined toward playing a certain way. Michelle liked to focus on the boys’ mindsets and feelings.
When asked what fostered the grounded, level demeanor he exhibits now, Murray looks back on this time in his life.
"I grew from 5’10 in my sophomore year to 6’7 my senior year, so I knew I had potential to be a pretty good basketball player,” Murray remembers. “I felt like I could’ve played Division 1 straight out of high school, but I didn’t have the offers.”
At the time, Murray was a standout player fresh off of a productive senior campaign at Prairie High School in Cedar Rapids, with offers from a trio of Division 2 schools and just one from a Division 1 school. Murray, who did not want his parents to have to pay for college, was determined to get a full scholarship to play basketball somewhere. The brothers were considering Junior College, but Kenyon and Michelle pushed for DME in Daytona Beach, Florida.
“They did not want to go to Florida,” Michelle says with a laugh, adding that neither Keegan or Kris are beach guys. But more than that, the twins didn’t want to look at an option so far from home at first. They’re a family of homebodies, happiest when they’re around each other. It’s a feeling Keegan has talked about before, growing up in a calm environment, and one Michelle takes pride in. She remembers growing up with a lot of chaos and wanted to create a home for her kids that held the opposite — not a lot of TV, more doing puzzles together and reading. It made the ultimatum she and Kenyon put to Keegan and Kris unusual.
“I told 'em, if there's anything that I'm telling you that you have to do, this is the only time I'm telling you that you have to do this, regardless of how you feel. You're gonna go do this,” Kenyon says. “And it was, that was the only time.”
“Moving down there was, I mean it's a lot different than Iowa,” Kris recalls over the phone from Iowa City, where his junior year with the Hawkeyes is newly underway. “There was an adjustment period when we first got there, but we enjoyed it a lot just ‘cause it gave us lot of peace,” he continues, noting the way the team was run like a college program. “We knew that we only had to focus on one thing.”
The two began playing basketball every day, six or seven days a week, for seven months. Kris remembers his brother’s approach to the game shifting, specifically his patience.
“We had a lot of guys that would talk to the other team, like talk trash,” Murray quietly corrects. “We had a couple fights. What I saw, I saw those mental errors that ended up not being good for our team, so I thought, I’m not going to be that guy that makes those errors that might cost us a game. I think that realization helped me a lot.
“I went in there and [Coach Wes] taught me what maturity was like,” Murray continues. “Being able to play at your own pace, but mentally staying in the game whether things are going good or if they’re going bad. After that, I think I started simplifying the game more and doing things that I’m good at. If shots aren’t dropping, just shoot the next shot. I always have the utmost confidence to keep shooting whether they go in or not.”
Understanding the importance of the opportunity and to ease some of the transition, Michelle moved to Florida to help get Keegan and Kris settled, and to make sure they were both eating enough food. Kenyon stayed in Cedar Rapids with the family’s youngest daughter. Running two households, she and Kenyon note, wasn’t financially ideal, but both stress that the boys recognized the sacrifice their family made.
"They poured everything they had into their time in Florida,” Kenyon says with an audible note of pride in his voice. “And obviously they reaped the benefits of it."
Murray’s newly honed patience and slowed down game, ironically enough, meant things began to accelerate. Head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes, Fran McCaffery, paid the family a visit in advance of the Hoop Exchange Showcase in Orlando, and had a good idea of what he was seeing in Keegan and Kris. At the Hoop Exchange, both Murray brothers impressed. Close to 50 Division 1 schools called them on Monday, and on Wednesday, Keegan and Kris flew to Iowa City for a visit to campus. Both were offered scholarships Friday and committed on Sunday.
Michelle remembers playing Devil’s advocate, though she didn’t want to — “I let them know, you do not have to go here because your dad did,” she recalls. “First and foremost. If one of you wants to go here and the other one wants to keep looking, that's fine. And also, you don't have to commit right now. You can go and visit other schools and see. Your name is just getting out there. Like, you're gonna have so much opportunity.”
For his part, Kenyon said being legacy recruits was important, “but they're both better than me,” he says with a chuckle. “So there's really no comparison in that regard.
Keegan and Kris were firm — they wanted to go to Iowa. Being close to home was important, but there was something even more that stood out to Kris that kept getting brought up when he and Keegan would deliberate.
“The biggest one we had was just talking to Coach McCaffery, and him seeing us as individual people,” Kris admits. “He knew that our games were a little bit different, knew that we're different people on and off the court, and that's what we appreciated the most. ‘Cause a lot of coaches in our recruitment didn't see that, even though we tried to emphasize that.”
I started simplifying the game... If shots aren’t dropping, just shoot the next shot. I always have the utmost confidence to keep shooting whether they go in or not.”
It seems obvious, if not necessary, to view recruits as individuals who bring their own respective skills. But the Murray brothers were often seen as an anomaly or a package deal. Both are patient about it because they’ve been hearing it their whole lives and they share the kind of bond that can only come from being twin brothers. Keegan believes if Kris sat down for the same interview, “you’d probably get the same answers. Just the way he talks and how I talk, how we see life and see the game, it’s kind of weird.”
When it comes to playing basketball, however, Kris quibbles with that.
“I'm probably a little bit more vocal than Keegan is on the court,” he says. “I'm more of a willing facilitator than he is. He's a scorer. Especially in college, passing wasn't his biggest thing,” he pauses, “especially to me.”
As ribbing as he can be of his brother, Kris has a clear-eyed perspective of who Keegan is as a player. Recalling a close game against Michigan in spring of their sophomore year, Kris watched Keegan drive into the lane and his own defender peeled away to double-team his brother. “I was literally standing at the three point line, just waiting, waiting, waiting for him to pass. And then once he knew he didn't have a shot, he actually threw me the ball,” he says with a chuckle, feigning shock. Kris made the shot and Iowa won the game, but in the grand scheme of things, no matter how much he rolled his eyes over Keegan’s tendency to go ISO, the two would joke, “like, every time you didn't pass me the ball you'd end up making a tough shot, so, there wasn't anything lost really there.”
Of their eventual separation, both brothers knew it was coming. Kris laughs that it was probably more of an adjustment for him, because he’d be the one looking for Keegan when he’s pushing the ball. “He was a rim runner last year, so I usually look up to see where Keegan is,” Kris says. Keegan admits his first few Summer League scrimmages with the Kings felt strange without Kris until he settled into the group’s rhythm. Both are happy to be moving in their own direction and when they talk, which Kris says is two or three times a week, it’s about life, not basketball.
For how the brothers worked to develop their own skill and athletic identities, something that would be crucial to both of their future careers, there was one more way their perceived interchangeable nature would surprise them.
“Here’s a good story,” Keegan smiles, leaning forward in his chair, “when we got drafted,” he quickly corrects himself, “when I got drafted to the Kings, there’s that big video board on top. And they put Kris’s face on top. So like, when I got called up it showed Kris’s roster picture from Iowa instead of mine, but my family were the only ones that knew about it.”
“It was literally my Iowa headshot picture,” Kris, who waited until Keegan was finished with his interviews that night to tell him, confirms over the phone. “So someone had to go and look up Keegan's name on our roster and get that headshot, but they got my headshot instead.”
"
"
"
"
"
WRITER AND ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: KATIE HEINDL | ASSOCIATE EDITOR: BILL DIFILIPPO | CREATIVE DIRECTOR: MARTIN RICKMAN
DESIGNERS: CARLOS SOTELO OLIVAS & Daisy James | PHOTOGRAPHER: GRADY BRANNAN | LOCATION SCOUT: KEVIN FIPPIN | PROJECT MANAGER: JASON TABRYS
by KATIE HEINDL // CONTRIBUTOR // DIME AND UPROXX SPORTS
WRITER AND ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: KATIE HEINDL
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: BILL DIFILIPPO
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: MARTIN RICKMAN
Design: CARLOS SOTELO OLIVAS & DAISY JAMES
PHOTOGRAPHY: GRADY BRANNAN
PROJECT MANAGER: JASON TABRYS
LOCATION SCOUT: KEVIN FIPPIN
Where I'm from, there's not a lot of people that make it out.
I don't want any, like, slack or anything.
Just coach me really hard. That's the whole deal with me.”
Going to Florida and working with DME coach Wesam Al-Sous came to be the critical shift Murray needed to slow the game, and himself, down. Al-Sous, a former Jordanian pro and the head coach of Jordan’s national team, told Michelle and Kenyon both boys were talented but needed work on “everything above the shoulders.” They had to understand what it took to be great.
“And that's the time you put into with your skill development, how you lead, understanding that you are always a role model to the other players and your teammates,” Kenyon says.
Asked if it stayed and Keegan quickly confirms, “It stayed. It stayed up there the whole time. It was bad. It was wild. I didn’t realize it until after I got done with all the media stuff. And he told me that and I was like, you gotta be kidding me.”
Rather than look at it as a moment taken away from him, Keegan sees it as another way his brother was present. Plus, when the suggestion of repeating the switch in reverse for Kris’s Draft comes up, Keegan is happy for the shoe to be on the other foot. “They can put my picture,” he says.
That ability to take the wide-angle approach to life, to experience and enjoy the time between things, has only been tested in all the added free time Murray has found himself with as a rookie. Without the routine of classes and then practice into the evenings, he admits he’ll have to find a hobby. He was also out for much of the team’s early season training while recovering from wrist surgery over the summer. His teammates, many of them as new to Sacramento as Murray is, have helped. Murray mentions golfing with Kevin Huerter, and that Matthew Dellavedova has given him advice about real estate and crypto when he’s not imparting his veteran knowledge on the court.
Aside from the typical adjustments a first-year NBA player goes through — the recognition that every opponent is going to play at a high level, that the game is more physical, and for Murray, not being able to drive to his childhood home — Murray’s expansive approach to basketball fits so naturally with the shift the Kings have taken this season that it already feels familiar to watch him on the floor at Golden 1.
“We have a lot of different guys around my position, my height. We can put out a really small lineup and be effective. We have length, athleticism, and shooting,” Murray says.
They also have speed. The Kings, as of this writing, are in the top half of the league in both pace and fewest turnovers committed per game. Relative speed on its own can be a bad thing, but the Kings have thus far been comfortable and smart deploying it at both ends of the floor. It was something the front office saw in Murray’s apparent ability (observed on a recent broadcast) to move in slow motion, and something he deploys with ease in split-second interceptions or step backs.
“That was one thing they said, when they drafted me, was how fast I’m able to get up and down the court. Coach Brown is big on pushing the ball any chance we get, flying down the court,” Murrays says with a smile. He credits that apparent manipulation of time to visualization techniques he’s worked on with his mentor, David Nurse, and fine-tuning his instincts, “Once [things] slowed down, I was able to use my instincts more. I think that just comes with the mentality. If shots aren’t falling offensively, defensively you might sulk. It’s still having that steady mindset to play both sides of the ball.”
Murray has taken to Brown, likewise a new arrival in Sacramento. He reminds him of Coach McCaffery at Iowa, who was “huge on the little things.” It helped Murray’s game — at DME, Iowa, and now, he says — to take such meticulous focus and be held accountable to a strict, hard-nosed coach. Off the floor Brown is also like Murray’s former coaches in that “they don’t take basketball outside the lines, I think that’s really big.”
It can be hard to resist placing timelines and their resulting expectations on rookies. There’s already chatter about Murray’s odds for Rookie of the Year, for instance. Some of it comes from a genuine desire to support and see the best out of exciting young athletes. Other times it comes out of the toxicity of a dated, best-or-bust approach to sports. Murray, who was taken fourth overall in the 2022 NBA Draft, is in a unique position because it seems like he’s circumnavigated that step with his ease and familiarity on the floor. He has his own tricks when it comes to taking a fresh approach to every game, like watching his old highlights when his body’s hurting or he’s feeling mentally tired. He obviously has the support of his family, who watch his games now and are able to catch the same twinkle in his eyes shooting a three that he had when putting his foam ball up into his Little Tikes hoop, or pick out the same moves Murray did back in his high school gym at Prairie, or in Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Sure, some of Murray’s broad and expansive game, his ability to step outside the moment and witness it, comes from growing up in a place where time is considered a gift, not a resource. But most comes from gratitude, being humbled by expectations that didn’t pan out, and the hard work of his family that made his present reality possible. We bemoan, often, just how long an NBA season is. All those games, all that time. Murray, backlit by a big California sun sinking across the Sacramento River, is as greedy for them as the day feels just before evening, awash in golden hour light.
“We have 82 games this season,” he says. “And I’m not taking one for granted.”
I think this is probably the perfect situation for me. To be in a new culture with other people that are going to be new along with myself. I think a lot of people are ready to get this thing rolling."
It seems obvious, if not necessary, to view recruits as individuals who bring their own respective skills. But the Murray brothers were often seen as an anomaly or a package deal. Both are patient about it because they’ve been hearing it their whole lives and they share the kind of bond that can only come from being twin brothers. Keegan believes if Kris sat down for the same interview, “you’d probably get the same answers. Just the way he talks and how I talk, how we see life and see the game, it’s kind of weird.”
When it comes to playing basketball, however, Kris quibbles with that.
“I'm probably a little bit more vocal than Keegan is on the court,” he says. “I'm more of a willing facilitator than he is. He's a scorer. Especially in college, passing wasn't his biggest thing,” he pauses, “especially to me.”
As ribbing as he can be of his brother, Kris has a clear-eyed perspective of who Keegan is as a player. Recalling a close game against Michigan in spring of their sophomore year, Kris watched Keegan drive into the lane and his own defender peeled away to double-team his brother. “I was literally standing at the three point line, just waiting, waiting, waiting for him to pass. And then once he knew he didn't have a shot, he actually threw me the ball,” he says with a chuckle, feigning shock. Kris made the shot and Iowa won the game, but in the grand scheme of things, no matter how much he rolled his eyes over Keegan’s tendency to go ISO, the two would joke, “like, every time you didn't pass me the ball you'd end up making a tough shot, so, there wasn't anything lost really there.”
Of their eventual separation, both brothers knew it was coming. Kris laughs that it was probably more of an adjustment for him, because he’d be the one looking for Keegan when he’s pushing the ball. “He was a rim runner last year, so I usually look up to see where Keegan is,” Kris says. Keegan admits his first few Summer League scrimmages with the Kings felt strange without Kris until he settled into the group’s rhythm. Both are happy to be moving in their own direction and when they talk, which Kris says is two or three times a week, it’s about life, not basketball.
For how the brothers worked to develop their own skill and athletic identities, something that would be crucial to both of their future careers, there was one more way their perceived interchangeable nature would surprise them.
“Here’s a good story,” Keegan smiles, leaning forward in his chair, “when we got drafted,” he quickly corrects himself, “when I got drafted to the Kings, there’s that big video board on top. And they put Kris’s face on top. So like, when I got called up it showed Kris’s roster picture from Iowa instead of mine, but my family were the only ones that knew about it.”
“It was literally my Iowa headshot picture,” Kris, who waited until Keegan was finished with his interviews that night to tell him, confirms over the phone. “So someone had to go and look up Keegan's name on our roster and get that headshot, but they got my headshot instead.”
Asked if it stayed and Keegan quickly confirms, “It stayed. It stayed up there the whole time. It was bad. It was wild. I didn’t realize it until after I got done with all the media stuff. And he told me that and I was like, you gotta be kidding me.”
Rather than look at it as a moment taken away from him, Keegan sees it as another way his brother was present. Plus, when the suggestion of repeating the switch in reverse for Kris’s Draft comes up, Keegan is happy for the shoe to be on the other foot. “They can put my picture,” he says.
That ability to take the wide-angle approach to life, to experience and enjoy the time between things, has only been tested in all the added free time Murray has found himself with as a rookie. Without the routine of classes and then practice into the evenings, he admits he’ll have to find a hobby. He was also out for much of the team’s early season training while recovering from wrist surgery over the summer. His teammates, many of them as new to Sacramento as Murray is, have helped. Murray mentions golfing with Kevin Huerter, and that Matthew Dellavedova has given him advice about real estate and crypto when he’s not imparting his veteran knowledge on the court.
Aside from the typical adjustments a first-year NBA player goes through — the recognition that every opponent is going to play at a high level, that the game is more physical, and for Murray, not being able to drive to his childhood home — Murray’s expansive approach to basketball fits so naturally with the shift the Kings have taken this season that it already feels familiar to watch him on the floor at Golden 1.
“We have a lot of different guys around my position, my height. We can put out a really small lineup and be effective. We have length, athleticism, and shooting,” Murray says.
"
And there were moments where he didn't do that and he let his emotions run really high when it comes to, you know, if he wasn't hitting shots he would go into a downward spiral and that would lead to him having more inconsistency.”
"
I think this is probably the perfect situation for me. To be in a new culture with other people that are going to be new along with myself. I think a lot of people are ready to get this thing rolling."