Late Friday night, inside a cramped Memphis Grizzlies locker room, Ja Morant settled into a chair in the corner. It had been a frustrating night for Memphis, which dropped a 117–106 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. It had been an equally difficult one for Morant, who was held without a field goal in the fourth quarter.
“Obviously,” Morant said. “We didn't get the outcome we wanted.”
O.K. So what? It’s late December. Who cares? Memphis does. It has to. Morant’s 25-game absence put the Grizzlies in a 6–19 hole. They likely have to play .600 basketball to get in the play-in mix. Maybe better.
“We try to win every game we play,” Morant said. “So that's our mindset no matter what happened before.”
Fine. Here’s the thing. Memphis can play .600 basketball for the next four months. Or better. Brandon Clarke’s absence hurts and Steven Adams’s season-ending injury is a killer. But the Grizzlies have talent. Jaren Jackson Jr. is good. Desmond Bane is really good. And with Morant back, Marcus Smart can be the charge-taking, ball-hawking, multi-position defending player Memphis wanted when they acquired the star guard from the Boston Celtics.
“He allows me to be me and focus more on the defensive end,” says Smart. “On offense, he just makes it easier for us. We just got to be ready to knock down the shots.”
Added Morant, “I mean it's a different ball game when I'm out there. Teams got to scout different and have defensive schemes when I'm on the floor, which allows a lot of pressure to get off the rest of the guys on the team. Allow them to be themselves.”
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The sample size is small, but revealing. Memphis is 4–1 with Morant in the lineup. They have two wins over the New Orleans Pelicans, one over the Indiana Pacers and another over the Atlanta Hawks. Not a murderer’s row but three of those wins came against playoff contenders. The defensive numbers with Morant in the lineup are better. The offensive numbers are way better. Before the game, Clippers coach Ty Lue remarked that he could see the confidence Morant’s return had given the Grizzlies.
Said Lue, “That’s a team you don’t want to see in the first round.”
Ask about the deficit they face and Grizzlies players offer the same answer. “One game at a time,” says Smart. Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins says he has not discussed the hole Memphis is in once. It’s all the Grizzlies can do. Staring at the standings after each game to see what the Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets are doing is counterproductive.
“It's about just playing better basketball, one day at a time,” said Jenkins. “I think our guys are always focused on the task at hand, one day at a time. So luckily I'm not trying to create a narrative, talk about it, that's for somebody else to talk about. There's a lot of basketball left.”
And they have Morant. A motivated Morant. After hitting the game-winner in his return against the Pelicans, Morant, on his sprint to the Grizzlies locker room, bellowed “I kept receipts.” Morant may have missed 25 games but he’s hit the ground running. He’s averaging 27 points per game. He was named Player of the Week in his first week back. His three-point shot has been erratic—he missed all seven of his attempts against the Clippers—but his presence has opened up the offense for everyone else.
“I've just seen this guy super locked in,” said Jenkins. “He understood the reality. I think the team understood the reality, going in, what we were going to face at the start of the season. It's been super impressive, how he's been locked in with his teammates. I mentioned at Zoom sessions with him, before, during and after the games, conversations with the guys in the locker room, on the plane, how he just leaned into his teammates even more. Just the joy of being around his group, he loves this game.”
“But I saw in the work that he was doing behind the scenes, no one else got to see that, but we got to see that. So that when he came back, I think he said, ‘I'm just going to be Ja.’ But I think this is a great version of Ja. He is connecting us with his teammates, his understanding of his responsibility on both sides of the floor, but also his ability to embrace the minutes that he's playing right now right out of the gate, is all the training that he was doing behind the scenes.”
This Memphis season is a fascinating one. The Grizzlies have been one of the NBA’s best teams in the last two regular seasons. They have the talent to still be one. But there is urgency. There has to be. Memphis can’t dwell on every loss. But they can’t afford to let them pile up, either.
“We got to be in the present and that's the only way we're going to fix it,” says Smart. “At least give ourselves a chance anyway. It's not going to be perfect, but that's the beauty of this game. Crazy things happen.”
Morant agreed.
“It’s going to be ups and downs,” Morant said. “We just got to stay together, continue to work to get better, focus on the present as today…if you focus too much on one game it can continue to go and we don’t want that to happen.”
