Ja Morant Has Arrived
It started with a bold proclamation. On May 5, 2021, Ja Morant told TNT’s Shaquille O’Neal that he believes he is a top-five point guard in the NBA. On Friday night, he backed up the eyebrow-raising statement with arguably the best performance of his entire career. The fifth-youngest player in NBA history to lead a playoff team in points and assists per game at just 21 years old, Morant would have been forgiven for shrinking under the pressure of the moment. After all, a win-or-go-home game on the road against Steph Curry’s Warriors presented a stacked deck of challenges. Most fans and analysts believed the far more experienced Golden State team would handle a very young Memphis squad at home. Of a panel of 17 ESPN analysts, 16 picked the Warriors to advance (kudos, Monica McNutt). With fans in the building at a shiny new Chase Center, the Warriors came in with confidence that they would get the job done. Ja Morant didn't care. The former Murray State point guard finished with 35 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists, and 4 steals, becoming just the second player in Grizzlies history to reach those marks and producing the best numbers of his young career so far.
Ja Morant won the rookie of the year award just a season ago, but many people added the asterisk of Zion Williamson not playing enough games to win the award. However, Morant has now led Memphis to a 72-73 record in his two professional seasons while Williamson’s Pelicans have struggled to even get close to .500 over the same span. It wasn’t always supposed to be this way - Williamson was a massively-hyped prospect for many years prior to the draft and Morant was a bit of an unknown coming out of Murray State. He wasn’t even rated on the high school recruiting database coming out of Crestwood High School in South Carolina, and he only received that one offer from mid-major Murray State. However, Morant played some incredible ball throughout his collegiate career and exploded in his sophomore season as he averaged 24.5 and 10.0 assists per game - no, not per-36 minutes, per game. That production earned him a spot as a first-team All-American and the Bob Cousy Award as the best point guard in the country. Morant’s amazing play squarely put him on the NBA map, and the Grizzlies scooped him up with the second pick in the 2019 draft. Suddenly, the formerly undiscovered prospect had signed a $17 million contract with an NBA team. However, he didn’t stop shocking the world then, and he doesn’t have the look of stopping anytime soon.
With two and a half minutes remaining in the fourth quarter Friday night, the Grizzlies were nursing a 97-90 lead. The Warriors didn’t stop grinding, and they ultimately sent the game to overtime tied 99-99. Three missed shots in the paint by Ja Morant over that stretch didn’t help Memphis close it out. Everything suggested the Warriors would get the win. They have Steph Curry, who many consider the best player in the league, have a championship pedigree and were playing at home. Again, Ja Morant didn’t care. He made two clutch 10-foot floaters with under a minute remaining to deliver Memphis its first playoff berth since 2017. Morant clutched up in a way that belied the typical limitations of a 21-year-old basketball player and came through for his club. Now, Morant will lead the Grizzlies into a series against the 1-seed Jazz, a team that’s remarkably vulnerable given the questionable injury status of top scorer Donovan Mitchell. So, is Ja Morant a top-five point guard in the NBA? That’s still very much up for debate. However, the 21-year-old guard just outdueled Steph Curry on a nationally televised, playoff stage with all of the odds stacked against him. Morant is here to stay, and I can’t wait to see what he does next.
