Road to Duke
For Alex Murphy, the question wasn't where to go to college — it was when. He had been the most decorated of three Murphy brothers since middle school, the most athletic and the most extroverted, the one who came to watch older brother Erik's games at St. Mark's and turned heads of his own. By the spring of his junior year at the same Massachusetts boarding school, he had already led St. Mark's to a 28-3 record and been named Independent School League Player of the Year, averaging 21.0 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 4.0 assists per game. He had committed to Duke on February 7, 2011, picking the Blue Devils over Florida (where his brother Erik was starting), Arizona, Boston College (his father Jay's alma mater), North Carolina, Villanova, and West Virginia. The board was set.
Then he did something unusual. On April 19, 2011, Murphy announced that he would reclassify from the class of 2012 to the class of 2011, skip his senior year of high school basketball, and enroll at Duke that August — joining the recruiting class a full year ahead of schedule. To make it work academically, he transferred from St. Mark's back to South Kingstown High School in Wakefield — the same Rhode Island public school he had attended as a freshman before leaving for prep — and finished his graduation requirements there over a few weeks. He became the fifth member of Duke's 2011 recruiting class alongside Austin Rivers, Quinn Cook, Marshall Plumlee, and Michael Gbinije. "It was a very difficult decision, but at the end of the day, I thought this was the best thing for my future," Murphy said. "It's a great opportunity."
Born June 3, 1993, in Wakefield, Rhode Island, Alex James Murphy grew up inside a basketball family with claims on two continents. His father, Jay Murphy, was born in Meriden, Connecticut, on June 26, 1962, played for Maloney High School there, and went on to a four-year career at Boston College from 1980 to 1984 under coaches Tom Davis and Gary Williams. The 6'9" power forward averaged 14.6 points and 6.2 rebounds per game across 123 games, finished sixth on BC's career scoring list with 1,795 points (and seventh in rebounds with 763), was a three-time All-Big East selection, made first-team All-Big East as a senior, and led the Eagles to three NCAA Tournament appearances — two Sweet Sixteens and one Elite Eight — plus an NIT bid. He was selected with the 31st overall pick of the 1984 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors and immediately traded to the Los Angeles Clippers. He played 67 NBA games over four seasons with the Clippers and Washington Bullets through 1988, then continued his career in France (Paris Basket Racing, ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne) and Italy (Fabriano Basket from 1991 to 1995). He was inducted into the Boston College Varsity Club Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999.
Alex's mother, Päivi Murphy, was a Finnish-born basketball player who represented the Finland women's national team from 1988 to 1994 and also played professionally in Sweden. She and Jay had three sons. The oldest, Erik Murphy, was born in Lyon, France, on October 26, 1990, while Jay was playing for Paris Basket Racing — making Erik French-born, Finnish (through his mother), and American (through his father). Alex came two and a half years later, born in Wakefield after the family had returned to the United States. The youngest, Tomas Murphy, was born in 1998. All three boys held dual American-Finnish passports through their mother's citizenship. The Murphys are Catholic and were members of Saint Francis of Assisi Parish in Wakefield. "I kind of know the deal down there," Erik would later say of Alex's eventual transfer to Florida, "how the program and the coach operate."
Erik went to St. Mark's and then to Florida (2009-2013), where he started 32 of 34 games as a junior, was named first-team All-SEC as a senior in 2012-13, led the SEC in 3-point percentage at 45.3%, scored 1,052 career points, and was selected by the Chicago Bulls with the 49th pick of the 2013 NBA Draft. Alex followed Erik to St. Mark's in Southborough, Massachusetts, where he played alongside future major-conference recruits Kaleb Tarczewski (Arizona) and Nik Stauskas (Michigan) — a basketball factory turning out high-major prospects every spring. Alex's freshman year at St. Mark's, the team won the NEPSAC Class C Championship. As a junior, he led St. Mark's to a 28-3 record (14-0 in league play) and the NEPSAC tournament championship game (lost to Tilton). His statistical line — 21.0 / 7.2 / 4.0 — earned him the ISL Player of the Year award. By the time he was deciding where to go to college, he was ranked No. 37 by Scout, No. 40 in the ESPNU 100, No. 45 by Rivals, and No. 49 in the RSCI Top 100.
There was a logical pull toward Florida. Erik was already there, in the middle of his career under Billy Donovan; the idea of a Murphy-brothers frontcourt in Gainesville was a recruiting columnist's favorite storyline. Some of those columnists assumed Florida would be the destination. "Duke and Florida were at the top of my list by a mile," Murphy said years later. He picked Duke. The pull of playing for Mike Krzyzewski, of joining a recruiting class that included Austin Rivers, Quinn Cook, and Michael Gbinije — players Murphy had already played alongside in the Boost Mobile Elite 24 game as a junior, where he had scored nine points — outweighed the family-fit argument. And then, a few months later, he doubled down by reclassifying up. He would not play his senior year at St. Mark's. He would not be the most-watched player in the ISL again. He would walk into Duke's gym in August 2011, eighteen years old, and find out what he could do.
At Duke
Coach K had brought him in early because he saw a 6'8" wing with an outstanding skill set, the length and instincts to defend multiple positions, a fluid open-floor game, and the kind of basketball IQ Duke recruited above almost every other trait. The Duke media guide entry on Murphy in 2011-12 called him "an outstanding wing athlete with range out to the three-point line" who was "at his best when filling the lane on the break or attacking the offensive glass." The path it described — "up-tempo style should suit his skill set and put him in position to be a significant rotation player in 2013-14" — was the path everyone, including Murphy himself, expected him to follow.
Then he showed up for the fall of 2011 and ran into Duke's roster reality. The Blue Devils had Austin Rivers, Seth Curry, Andre Dawkins, Tyler Thornton, Quinn Cook, Mason Plumlee, the Plumlee brothers, Ryan Kelly, and a wing rotation already deeper than the freshmen would crack. Murphy played in all three of Duke's international games against the Chinese National Team that summer and the exhibition versus the United Arab Emirates, averaging 4.3 points per game. He played in the home exhibitions against Bellarmine and Shaw, drawing the start against Bellarmine. He hit his only shot — a three-pointer — against Shaw. And then, in December 2011, after Duke's 86-80 win over Washington at Madison Square Garden, he announced his decision to redshirt the rest of his freshman season alongside fellow freshman Marshall Plumlee. "It's still to be determined," Murphy said at the time, "but a redshirt year is most likely what I'm going to do. That's the plan right now." He was named to the ACC Academic Honor Roll for his work in the classroom. He had a year off the basketball clock. The reset came that summer in Bulgaria.
In June 2012, Murphy joined the U-20 Finnish national team at the FIBA U-20 European Championship Division B in Sofia. It was his first chance to play through-the-rotation minutes against high-level competition, and he produced. Across seven games, he led Finland in scoring at 17.4 points per game, in rebounding at 6.6, and in shot-blocking at 1.3 — finishing top-10 in the tournament in points per game (8th), field goals made (4th), two-point field goals made (3rd), and blocks per game (9th). He scored 30 against Poland and 29 against Belgium to close out the tournament, a dominant finish that helped Finland to an 8th-place result and earned the country promotion to the A Division for 2013. He came back to Durham as a redshirt freshman with a real passport stamp on his game.
The 2012-13 season was the start of what was supposed to be the productive part of his Duke career. Murphy played in 31 games off the bench, averaged 2.1 points and 1.0 rebound in 6.6 minutes per game, and shot 49.1% from the field (27-of-55). He played 33 minutes total. He recorded his first career block in the Battle 4 Atlantis title game against No. 2 Louisville on November 24. He grabbed two rebounds in six minutes against Florida Gulf Coast on November 18. He came off the bench to play two minutes against No. 3 Kentucky in his Duke debut on November 13. The signature offensive moment of his year came on February 21 against Virginia Tech: he converted the first three-point play of his career and then hit a three-pointer the next time down, scoring six consecutive points in a stretch that briefly delivered on what the recruiting profile had promised. The team finished 30-6, won the ACC Tournament, and lost to Louisville in the Elite Eight. Murphy was on the bench for that loss, where Mason Plumlee played his last game in a Duke uniform.
Coming into the 2013-14 season, the Duke media guide framed Murphy as a player whose redshirt + sophomore work in the weight room had added 10 pounds of muscle and whose game was ready for a bigger role. "Continues to work on his shooting stroke as well as his ability to create off the dribble," the entry read. "Has the length, quickness and instincts to be a strong wing defender ... added strength will allow him to better defend in the paint ... up-tempo style should suit his skill set and put him in position to be a significant rotation player in 2013-14." Then the season started, and the rotation problem only got worse. Duke had Jabari Parker as a freshman — the consensus No. 1 prospect in the country — taking the wing minutes Murphy had spent two years working toward. Behind Parker, the Devils had Andre Dawkins, Rasheed Sulaimon, Tyler Thornton, Quinn Cook, Rodney Hood, Matt Jones, and incoming wings on the way for the next class (Justise Winslow and Grayson Allen would arrive the following year, the season Murphy would have been a senior). Murphy played in five games for Duke through early December 2013 and totaled 33 minutes of action, averaging 1.0 point and 1.0 rebound before deciding the math was not going to add up.
On December 5, 2013, at the end of the fall semester, Murphy announced his intention to transfer. He told ESPN's Jeff Goodman shortly afterward, "I really appreciate the experience at Duke, playing for a Hall of Fame coach in Mike Krzyzewski. I learned a lot as a player and a person." He had considered Rhode Island, Providence, and Northeastern as alternatives, but the gravitational pull of his brother's path proved irresistible. "I've gotten a chance to know Coach (Billy) Donovan and the program," he told Goodman. "I think it's a great fit for me to continue my career. I think they can help me develop as a player — and that I can help them a lot as well." Murphy joined the Florida Gators over the holiday break of 2013-14, sat out the rest of the season per NCAA transfer rules, ran on the scout team, and waited a full calendar year for his eligibility to come back.
After Duke
The wait, by his own description, was punishing. Florida strength coach Preston Greene reserved his hardest workouts — known among the Gators as "The Death Circuit" — for players who couldn't suit up on game days. Murphy spent the back half of 2013-14 and the front half of 2014-15 cycling through Death Circuit on game days, eating a pre-game meal he wasn't going to need, and walking to the O'Connell Center in a sweatsuit to watch from the end of the bench. "I finally graduated from the 'Death Circuit,' so thank God for that," Murphy said in December 2014, the day before he finally made his Florida debut. "That was tough, but the hardest time for me may have been the hours afterward."
His Gators debut came on December 20, 2014, against Wake Forest at the Orange Bowl Classic at BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida. Murphy scored 9 points and grabbed 4 rebounds in his first game in nearly twelve months. He went on to play 23 games in the 2014-15 season, average 5.1 points per game, make four starts, and produce two double-figure scoring nights — including a season-high 11 points with two three-pointers in a Florida win over Vanderbilt on February 18. He scored 10 in a co-leading effort against LSU on January 20. The version of his game that had finally arrived was, in his own description, modest by design. "I'm not great at any one thing," Murphy said, "but I do believe I can do a lot of things pretty well." Donovan saw it the same way: "His versatility is good. He can play a lot of positions and has a really good feel and good IQ."
Then, in October 2015, Murphy suffered a torn plantar fascia in his right foot during Florida's first preseason exhibition game. He sat out, came back, re-aggravated the injury within his first two practices back, and ultimately played only one game the entire 2015-16 season before shutting it down. The lost year was, by any measure, the lowest point of his basketball life. He had skipped his senior year of high school four years earlier to start his college career a year ahead of schedule. He was now sitting in a training room in Gainesville, two and a half years into his transfer chapter, watching the calendar run out on his eligibility.
He applied for an NCAA hardship waiver. On September 20, 2016, the NCAA granted him a sixth year of eligibility. He announced the news on Twitter the same day: "Finally! Excited to announce that after a long but worthwhile process, I've been granted a 6th year of eligibility by the NCAA! With that being said, it's time to give this whole school thing one more shot — I'll be finishing my college career @ Northeastern University." The Boston choice was, in retrospect, inevitable. Northeastern head coach Bill Coen had been an assistant at Boston College when Murphy's father Jay played there in the early 1980s. Coen had recruited the youngest Murphy brother, Tomas, to commit to Northeastern as a member of the class of 2017. "I had the idea of Northeastern in my mind all the way back to last spring, when I decided I was going to apply for a sixth year," Murphy said. "Coach Coen seemed all-in, so it was a no-brainer."
The 2016-17 season at Northeastern was, finally, the senior year Murphy had been chasing since 2013. He started 29 games, averaged 14.0 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, and produced the kind of consistent two-way play that had been promised on his recruiting profile six years earlier. He opened the season by scoring 20 points with four rebounds and four assists against Boston University on November 11. Three days later, on November 14, 2016, he nearly recorded a double-double in a Northeastern upset win at UConn — 9 points and 15 rebounds (still his career high in any college game), three assists, and three steals. He was named CAA Player of the Week for the performance, with CS Madness National Player of the Week honors layered on top. He scored 24 points at Cornell on November 30. He scored 18 in Northeastern's biggest win of the year, 81-73 at Michigan State on December 18, 2016. He earned a second CAA Player of the Week nod on December 19. Asked about the journey by SLAM that February, Murphy was reflective: "His college career has been quite the voyage. It has included both highs and lows. Still, even though there have been bridges to cross and hills to climb, Murphy is happy with the road he traveled."
Northeastern finished 15-16 that year, eliminated in the CAA Tournament. Murphy went undrafted in the 2017 NBA Draft, having played a final game in his alma mater's gym at age 23 with five years of college eligibility expended across three different programs. Younger brother Tomas would arrive at Northeastern that fall, joining Bill Coen's program as a four-star recruit and going on to win the CAA Rookie of the Week award twice and earn a spot on the CAA All-Rookie Team in 2017-18. (Tomas would go on to start for Northeastern's 2018-19 CAA Championship team that played Kansas in the NCAA Tournament, finish his career as a graduate transfer at Vermont in 2020-21, then have a brief stint at Nova Southeastern.) The third Murphy was extending the family's college career as Alex was leaving his behind.
Where Is He Now
Alex Murphy is 32 years old and currently in his ninth professional season as a basketball player. He plays for Flexicar Fuenlabrada Madrid in Spain's Primera FEB — the second division of Spanish professional basketball, one tier below the Liga ACB. The 2025-26 season is his third stint in Spain and his ninth professional team across four countries (Finland, Hungary, Spain, Japan, plus brief U.S. G League work). He joined Fuenlabrada in August 2025 after his most recent Japanese B.League contract — with Shimane Susanoo Magic — concluded that spring, and through his first six games with Fuenlabrada he posted a .596 field goal percentage, picking up where his European career left off two years earlier.
His professional itinerary, year by year, reads like a globalization map of post-NBA basketball. August 2017: signed with Joensuun Kataja of the Finnish Korisliiga, his first professional contract, in his mother's home country. July 2018: Szolnoki Olaj KK of the Hungarian League. August 2019: Delteco Gipuzkoa Basket in Spain's LEB Oro (now Primera FEB), where he averaged 13+ PPG and helped the club to the LEB Gold Runner-up final in 2020. August 2020: CB Granada in Spain. June 2021: Fukushima Firebonds in Japan's B2 League — where on January 2, 2022, in a road win over Earthfriends Tokyo Z, he scored a professional career-high 38 points on 13-of-18 shooting from two-point range plus 1-of-1 from three and 9-of-10 at the line. July 2022: Levanga Hokkaido of the Japanese B.League, joining fellow Duke alum Ryan Kelly on the same roster (Kelly arrived at Hokkaido for the 2022-23 season). August 2023: returned to Spain to sign with CB Estudiantes, where he started 40 games and shot 59.9% from the field while averaging 6.9 points and 2.5 rebounds per game. June 2024: Tryhoop Okayama of Japan's B3 League, where in 25 games he posted a starter's line of 12.7 PPG / 6.8 RPG / 1.4 APG before his contract was terminated on January 6, 2025. January 31, 2025: Alvark Tokyo in Japan's B1 League — a four-game cameo amid injury depth issues. March 2025: Shimane Susanoo Magic in the same league — 14 games, 8.4 PPG / 4.2 RPG / 1.6 APG, shooting 40% from three. And then, in August 2025, the move to Madrid and Fuenlabrada that brought him into the 2025-26 season.
Alongside the club journey runs the international one. Murphy made his senior debut for Finland during the 2022 EuroBasket qualifying cycle and played a steady role in the years that followed. The biggest moment of his international career came in 2023, when Lassi Tuovi's Finland national team — nicknamed Susijengi ("The Wolf Pack") — qualified for the FIBA Basketball World Cup for only the second time in history. Murphy was on the roster alongside Utah Jazz star Lauri Markkanen (the 2023 NBA Most Improved Player), Mikael Jantunen, Sasu Salin, Elias Valtonen, and fellow Duke Brotherhood member Jacob Grandison — yes, that Jacob Grandison, the Duke graduate transfer who appears on this site's wing rotation page. Finland was drawn into Group E in Okinawa, Japan, alongside Australia, Germany, and Japan, lost all three group games, then won twice in classification — beating Cape Verde and Venezuela — to finish 21st out of 32 teams. It was Finland's best World Cup result. Murphy's continued role on the Wolf Pack made him the third Murphy — after older brother Erik (who played for Finland from 2014 onward) and now Alex — to wear the Finnish national team jersey at a major FIBA tournament.
The family story has continued to expand. Erik Murphy, now 35, plays for the Kawasaki Brave Thunders in the Japanese B1 League — meaning that for stretches in 2022-23 and 2024-25, all three Murphy brothers were playing professional basketball on three different continents simultaneously. Jay Murphy lives in retirement after his coaching and pro careers ended in the late 1990s. Päivi Murphy is the matriarch of what is, by any reasonable measure, the most-traveled basketball family in Finnish history — three sons playing or having played in the United States, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary, Finland, Germany, Israel, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, China, and Japan. Alex's older brother spoke of the underlying philosophy of Murphy basketball back when Alex was making his Florida debut in 2014: "Coach always said don't put personal expectations on yourself. Instead, just work hard, play within the system, and the game will find you." The career Alex Murphy has built — from the eighteen-year-old who left St. Mark's a year early to chase Coach K's offer, through the Death Circuit at Florida, through the foot injury that almost ended him, through the sixth-year resurrection at Northeastern, through nine years and four countries of professional basketball — is the most complete answer anyone in the Brotherhood has given to that piece of advice. The game found him. It just made him chase it harder than most.