1.18.24

Repping for the Yellow and Black

Former Wichita State hoops great Toure’ Murry ’12, now in his first year as a player development coach with the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, was in the stands cheering for the Shockers over the Temple Owls at the Jan. 7 American Athletic Conference (AAC) game in Philly. Joining him were his wife and kids – all geared up in Shocker yellow-and-black.

“Wichita State has always been my team,” Murry told reporters and fellow Shocker fans while at the game. A standout shooting guard at WSU from 2008 to 2012, Murry led the Shockers to the 2011 NIT championship, a Missoui Valley Conference title and a return to the NCAA tournament. He averaged 11.1 points and 4.5 rebounds and set the WSU record in assists with 430 – until Fred VanVleet ’16, who played for the Shockers from 2012 to 2016, surpassed his mark with 637. Several weeks earlier, Murry’s 76ers played VanVleet’s Houston Rockets. After the game VanVleet sent a written message and autographed his game jersey to give to Murry.

After graduating from WSU, Murry went on to post a 10-year pro career that took him around the world to play basketball, including 56 games in the NBA, 51 of which were with the New York Knicks. His final pro season was spent with the Astros de Jalisco in Mexico, winning a CIBACOPA league title, before he retired in September 2022. Within a year of his retirement, one of the connections he made during his playing days brought him back to the NBA — as a coach.

Early on as a pro player, Murry and the Rio Grande Valley Vipers won a D-League championship under head coach Nick Nurse, who, some 10 years later, became head coach of the 76ers. It was Nurse who extended an invitation to Murry to join his staff in 2023. In his role as a player development coach, Murry is typically on the court two hours before each tipoff helping individual players go through dribbling and shooting drills. One of the players he has worked with is Ricky Council IV, a guard who played for the Shockers from 2020 to 2022.

“Right now,” Murry says about his new position as a coach, “I’m being a sponge. I just want to be able to share my battles and experiences, my trials and tribulations that I went through as a player and do anything I can to help coach these guys up the best I can.”