Is It Too Late for Ja Morant to Save the Grizzlies?
The embattled guard returns from suspension to find a team already running out of time.
When asked to reflect on the actions that led to him being suspended for the first 25 games of the 2023-24 NBA season, Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant said he has no regrets because the process helped him grow as a person.
"I'm not done yet at learning myself or learning new things, but I definitely see why the things that happened, happened,” Morant told reporters last week, days before his suspension lifts on Tuesday. "I can't say I sit up here and regret it because in the end, I feel like it made me better."
In the long run, a more mature Morant — whose suspension stemmed from multiple incidents over the past year, including brandishing guns on social media — is a good thing for both the player and his team, which signed Morant to a five-year, $231 million contract in July 2022. But in the short term, Morant and the Grizzlies surely wish they had those 25 games back to do over, because Memphis’ season is already in deep trouble.
With just six wins against 19 losses, Memphis is tied for the second-worst record in the Western Conference, a steep decline from last year’s second-best finish. Although they started the season with a 79% chance to make the playoffs (and 11% to make the NBA Finals) in The Messenger’s 2023-24 NBA forecast model, the Grizzlies are now down to 3% and 0.2% odds, respectively.
No team has seen a larger dip in either category since opening night. As a result, a squad that was once one of the ascendant powers in the West will face an uphill climb just to be in the playoff picture.
In large measure, that’s a testament to just how good Morant is — and how much it has hurt Memphis to be without him. Among all point guards with at least 3,500 minutes over the past two full NBA seasons (i.e., 2021-22 and 2022-23), Morant ranked eighth in Estimated RAPTOR, adding roughly 3.0 points per 100 possessions to Memphis’ bottom line while he was on the court. The 24-year-old is already one of the league’s most potent scorers and passers, particularly when driving to the hoop, and he is still capable of improving. Anything the Grizzlies do from here on out will depend heavily on how far Morant can carry them.
But it’s disappointing that his supporting cast, led by combo guard Desmond Bane and big man Jaren Jackson Jr. — the other cornerstones of what once ranked among the league’s best young cores — wasn’t better able to keep the team afloat in Morant’s absence. In expanded roles, both Jackson and Bane have seen their scoring efficiency dip and their defensive impact muted. Neither currently has an Estimated RAPTOR within 2.0 points per 100 of his 2022-23 mark.
Losing an explosive offensive talent of Morant’s caliber for 25 games would hurt any team — so it’s not terribly surprising that Memphis has dropped from 14th on offense last season to 30th this year. But even though Morant is not known for his defensive impact, the team has also dropped from No. 2 on defense to No. 9 in the early going this year, contributing to the Grizzlies’ slide from fourth in net rating to 24th.
Additional factors have worked against the Grizzlies. According to Spotrac, no team has lost more man-games to injury than Memphis, a number that includes absences for Marcus Smart, Steven Adams, Brandon Clarke and Luke Kennard. It’s likely that regardless of whether Morant was suspended or not, the Grizzlies would have struggled to maintain their 51-win pace from a year ago.
But now they may have to do just that to merely make the playoffs. In our 5,000 simulations of the NBA season, the median number of wins to secure the West’s No. 10 seed — i.e., to get a foot in the play-in tournament door at all — was 41, and the number to snag the No. 8 seed — which needs only to win one play-in game rather than two — was 44. To get from 6-19 to 41-41, Memphis will have to play at a clip of 50.4 wins per 82 over the rest of the season; to get to 44-38, that clip rises to 54.7 wins per 82.
It can be done, provided everything (and I mean everything) resets for the Grizzlies with Morant finally back in the lineup. Memphis did win at that kind of pace for the bulk of last season, after all. Perhaps Bane and Jackson will return to their familiar, more productive roles, and Morant will make the rest of the Grizzlies better while continuing his own ascent. But more likely, it will take a while for Morant to return to his usual form — time that the Grizzlies can’t afford to waste while chipping away at their deficit in the standings.
Because of this, the NBA’s punishment for Morant’s misdeeds may reverberate well beyond just the first eight weeks of this season, instead derailing an entire year for a Grizzlies club that seemed to have one of the league’s brightest futures not too long ago.
Filed under: NBA