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INDIANAPOLIS — It was the equivalent of your eyes being bigger than your stomach, but with clothes. Does that come with a fun quip?
Really, it’s just overpacking. Collin Murray-Boyles has a valid excuse for his sartorial excess, though.
“I got fits. Some I didn’t pull out,” said Murray-Boyles, the Toronto Raptors’ rookie forward, after the first long road trip of his career. The Raptors finished a five-game trip that spanned 10 nights away from Toronto with a win in Indiana against the Pacers on Saturday. He estimates that 30 percent of the clothes he packed went unworn.
“I was just too tired,” he said. “Right now, I just don’t feel like it because I’m sick. I didn’t have the energy to do it.”
Murray-Boyles got a nasty cold at the end of the trip, altering an experience he never truly had before. He missed the Raptors’ win in Cleveland on Thursday before playing 17 minutes against the Pacers after being listed as questionable heading into the game.
The Raptors went 4-1 on the trip, a monumental result for a team that went 23-59 away from Scotiabank Arena the previous two years. For Murray-Boyles, this was going to be an important trip regardless of the results. In college, teams typically spend a night or two away when they have road games. Things change during tournaments, but even then, players aren’t going from city to city and pulling into a new town in the early hours of the morning.
RJ Barrett runs the fastbreak and finds Collin Murray-Boyles for the flush 😀
Raptors lead the Pacers midway through the 3rd! pic.twitter.com/GgzInJrwTT
— NBA (@NBA) November 16, 2025
This was the longest the Raptors will be away from home before 2026. It was fairly tame by NBA standards: The Raptors stayed in the Eastern time zone, had just one back-to-back set at the outset and had two days without a game or scheduled practice — although players often find a gym to work out in the latter scenario.
“To be honest, I enjoyed it,” Murray-Boyles said. “It felt real long at the start. Once we got to the Cleveland game, it was like, ‘OK, we only got one more until we get to go home.’”
In a cruel bit of scheduling, the Raptors are home for just one game, against Charlotte on Monday, before returning to Philadelphia for another game on Wednesday. So really, the five-game trip was part of a seven-games-in-six-towns spurt, with the City of Brotherly Love — and not Toronto — as the repeat location.
Picked ninth in last June’s draft, Murray-Boyles decided to turn the trip into something special. He flew his mother, brother and aunt to the second and third games, in Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Anything else would have been too expensive, he reasoned, a fair mindset.
He said it was special to share some of the experience with his family, part of the reason he was feeling positive about the trip by its end. He noted that none of them got sick, however — just him. That had him more or less stuck in his hotel rooms for a few days, save for when the Raptors took the short flight from Cleveland to Indianapolis.
That’s another thing: The sleep is wild with the very late/early arrivals. The Raptors stayed overnight in Brooklyn on Tuesday before flying to Cleveland on Wednesday, meaning the Raptors had three night flights on the trip, even if a few of them were quick ones, plus a bus ride from Philadelphia to Brooklyn right after the loss to the 76ers. There were none of the 4 a.m. arrivals that dot the NBA calendar.
Still, this is all new for rookies.
“(Your sleep) is never consistent,” Murray-Boyles said. “You have to wake up with a consistent mindset. You’ve got to know what the goal is. We’re trying to win. Whatever you need to do, if that’s take naps midday, read, to get your mind off things, you gotta do it.”
For Murray-Boyles, it’s easier said than done. Fighting off the illness, Murray-Boyles did nap in between Saturday’s shootaround in Indianapolis and the game. That’s a rarity.
“I’m superstitious about naps,” he said. “Whenever I take a nap, I play bad. Whenever I don’t take a nap, I play good. That’s pretty much it.”
Told that teammate Brandon Ingram takes four-hour naps on game days, Murray-Boyles feared that he just wouldn’t wake up in time for his pregame duties if he tried that. Sleep-related anxiety: relatable.
Ultimately, road trips are not different from homestands in that they are defined by performance. That’s the nature of professional sports. Murray-Boyles has become a part of the Raptors’ rotation, a meaningful contributor on a good bench unit led by Sandro Mamukelashvili and Jamal Shead. Because of his defensive versatility, he is playing all over the floor, helpful in lineups that often don’t feature a true centre.
In his last game, he spent a lot of time on Pascal Siakam, the former Raptors forward known for his tireless movement and shiftiness in the half court. The rookie learned an important lesson: You can do everything right and still give up a bucket in the NBA, with Siakam pouring in a stepback 3 over Murray-Boyles’ solid defence.
“I’m still a little congested. Breathing isn’t the easiest right now,” Murray-Boyles said. “I’m not in the shape I was two days ago. (Your conditioning can regress) real quick. I’m breathing properly (through my nose) again. Just staying with him, (Siakam) has a tight handle, but his moves are very lateral. Keeping up with him is very tiring.”
Ultimately, Murray-Boyles’ performance was nothing to, uhh, sneeze at. He played 77 total minutes in four games, with the Raptors outscoring their opponents by eight points in that time. He was foul-prone in Brooklyn, but that is not unusual for a rookie, and he had company there. He put up 24 points and 17 rebounds altogether, hitting a 3 — his shooting will be a big swing skill for his career — in three of the four games.
“When you’re in season, that’s not the time to be doing new stuff,” Murray-Boyles said of his mindset in his rookie year. “It’s not the time to be freestyling. You have a game plan. Follow the game plan. It’ll make you look better. It’ll make the team look better in general.”
Aside from a three-game trip that will extend over the Christmas break, which will likely allow him to go home to South Carolina, Murray-Boyles doesn’t have another long trip on the schedule until mid-January. Similar to this trip, it will last five games, but four of those will be in the Pacific time zone, with the last game in Oklahoma City. Like this trip, there will be one game afterward at home, before another one-game trip — a relatively long flight to Orlando. Brutal.
He has some adjustments in mind.
“I’m gonna let my mom pack. I’m never doing that again,” Murray-Boyles said with a laugh, before getting serious. “You gotta know what you got. And who knows what you’re gonna pick up in these different cities. If you go and get something, make sure you have space (in your luggage). A lot of guys are carrying around bags and don’t got no space.”
The rookie is already learning.
