Vikings' Latavius Murray dedicates season to slain friend

As the sun singed exposed skin and the aroma of the annual Vikings alumni cookout wafted over the Winter Park practice fields, Latavius Murray watched his new team wrap up its final spring practice.

Standing there on the sideline in his No. 25 jersey, his mind drifted elsewhere.

Back in upstate New York, where Murray spent the majority of his childhood, a tense murder trial was in its early stages in a powder keg of a courtroom. The victim of the November shooting in Syracuse was his best friend, Jonathan Diaz.

The trial brought painful memories rushing back, but Murray mustered a happy face at Winter Park while chatting with teammates. A couple of hours later, while he sat down with a reporter at Bonfire in Eden Prairie, the mention of Diaz turned him somber.

"You're used to talking to somebody every day, telling him everything, and you spent so much time with a person, and then they're just not there," Murray said after his lunch of broiled halibut and asparagus was long gone. "You can call their phone and they don't answer. It's an unreal feeling. It still doesn't feel real."

Murray has stiff-armed adversity throughout his life, but he never had experienced heartbreak like this before. So he has resolved that any time he carries the ball this season for the Vikings, who coveted him for his straightforward running style and his big heart, he will be driving his legs for Diaz and pushing the pile in his memory.

"He wanted to do something that nobody would forget," Murray said. "So everything now that I do, I try to do it for him, too."

Murray was in California, stretched out on a massage table, when his phone began buzzing Nov. 23, the night before Thanksgiving. It was a buddy back in Syracuse.

"Jon got shot! Jon got shot!" the frantic friend yelled into the phone. Murray could hear commotion in the background. The friend hollered "Get off me!" at somebody, then hung up. Murray's attempts to get him back on the phone were unsuccessful.

Helpless, Murray sent his mother, Tuwanna Wright, to the hospital to find out more. His brother later called to tell him that Diaz had died after being shot in the chest.

Sangsouriyanh Maniphonh, a 28-year-old romantic rival of Diaz, was charged with his murder after the two men got into a skirmish around 1 a.m. outside of a bar. Maniphonh pulled out his legally concealed handgun and twice shot Diaz, who died in the hospital later that morning.

"I struggle with it because I don't know if it was good that I wasn't there and don't have the memory in my head," Murray said. "Does it help me that I don't live in Syracuse where the majority of my memories involve him?"

Murray and Diaz were friends since kindergarten, when a scuffle between them resulted in both being pulled into the principal's office. They were forced to make up and ended up forming a lasting friendship.

They were like brothers, and whenever Murray was back in Nedrow, N.Y., he usually was alongside Diaz, his fearless high school quarterback who later played football at the College of Brockport.

Four days after losing his best friend, Murray suited up against the Panthers and rushed for only 45 yards on 19 carries. The next day, he attended the funeral.

"I went to work and was a mess. I felt I had no choice. A part of me feels guilty, but what do you do in that situation? It also put it into perspective the game of football," he said. "I didn't care for nothing that game. But I had to be out there, I guess."

Emotions were inflamed last month when Maniphonh faced trial for murder and argued he shot Diaz in self-defense. During the trial a brawl broke out that resulted in three men being charged and two people taken to a hospital.

A week later, an Onondaga County jury found Maniphonh not guilty of murder.

"For the trial to not go the way we all wanted, it was kind of like another stab in the heart," Wright said. "He's been torn up about [Diaz's death]. It's had a tremendous, tremendous impact on his life. But the fact that he keeps Jonathan's memory alive, even just by wearing that number, that's a healing process there in itself."

Within hours of signing with the Vikings, Murray announced on Instagram that he had no intentions of wearing No. 28, the number he wore in Oakland and the one Adrian Peterson, his future-Hall-of-Fame predecessor, donned for a decade here.

Instead, Murray later told reporters he would wear No. 25, Diaz's old number.

At Onondaga High School, Murray succeeded Mike Hart, who went on to play at Michigan and in the NFL. As a senior, he was New York's Gatorade Player of the Year in 2007.

"Not that you can ever predict that a kid will go to the NFL, but you could see that he had something special by looking at him," said Bill Spicer, his coach there.

Seeking a change of scenery after high school, Murray spurned his beloved Syracuse for Central Florida.

He averaged only 2.9 yards per carry as a freshman. He then tore three knee ligaments and dislocated his knee playing pickup hoops the following spring. After missing a year, he returned to rush for 34 scores the next three seasons.

On Saturday, April 27, 2013, Murray's mother, his brother and one of his buddies gathered at their house in New York to watch the final four rounds of the NFL draft.

More than 1,000 miles away, down in Florida, his father listened on a prison radio.

Murray's parents, who never married, split up when he was 3. His mother moved Latavius and his older brother, Paul Jr., to be near her parents in upstate New York. After a few years they relocated to the country town of Nedrow, about 20 minutes outside of Syracuse.

Murray's father, even from a distance, remained a constant presence in his life. Latavius knew his father had been involved in illegal activities but said "it was a bit of a surprise" when he was busted for trafficking cocaine in 2010. After Paul Sr. was sentenced in 2013, Latavius stood by him, visiting him in prison on his birthday, Father's Day and non-holidays whenever he was in Florida.

"Though a person may be in there for his or her actions, you still feel bad that they don't have the freedom you have," Latavius said. "It was tough, especially early on."

His father, on disability after 2009 back surgery, called his arrest "a bad decision."

The day Latavius got drafted, Paul Sr. listened as much as he could on a radio in a common area at the prison. When the Oakland Raiders finally selected his son in the sixth round, he beamed with pride.

Released in 2016, Paul Sr. estimated he traveled to eight Raiders games last season and has since swapped out all of his silver-and-black gear for Vikings purple.

"It means everything," he said of his son's support. "It means the world to me."

Murray, after becoming Oakland's starting running back late in his second season, rushed for 1,066 yards in 2015 and made the Pro Bowl. Then, in 2016, he scored a dozen touchdowns despite playing most of the season's second half with a torn ankle ligament to help the Raiders to the playoffs with a 12-4 record.

Yet the Raiders, who didn't believe he was effective enough as a between-the-tackles pounder, gave little effort to re-signing Murray.

"To be a part of [Oakland's turnaround], that's what it's all about," he said. "Obviously, that's what makes it hard, when you invest so much time into something like that."

The Vikings signed him to a three-year, $15 million deal in March.

While holed up at Winter Park the night of negotiations, Murray sat through an online course for his MBA degree at Syracuse. Business is one of his many interests away from football.

In the 2016 offseason, he followed the Syracuse men's basketball team throughout the NCAA tourney, attending every game during its Final Four run.

Murray's Instagram account has photos of him posing on a Jet Ski in Dubai and flexing underneath the Eiffel Tower. This winter, he dived into photography, another reason he has connected with quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, his roommate after signing with the Vikings this spring. Murray is intrigued by a future in television and has in recent weeks made a few guest appearances on the NFL Network's morning show.

And you might catch him belting out Taylor Swift or Celine Dion at a karaoke bar.

"I like to have fun. I just like to live life," he said, eyeing up a reporter's fries. "I don't like to get crazy. But in the past few months I've grown to have a better appreciation for the life that I live. So I just try to have fun and enjoy every bit of it that I can."