After missing two games due to right shoulder soreness, Ja Morant returned to the Memphis Grizzlies‘ lineup on Wednesday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Asked how it was being back on the floor, Morant responded with one word: “Terrible.”
Why?
“‘Cause it was,” Morant told reporters following the 120-103 loss, via Matt Infield of Action News 5. “I should have been out, but I was out there, so, regardless of out, in, there’s going to be something said.”
Leading up to the game, Morant was listed as questionable due to a right deltoid contusion. During the second quarter, he appeared frustrated on back-to-back possessions in which he attacked the basket, took contact and didn’t get a foul call. Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins erupted after the second one, earning a technical foul.
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Asked about taking contact to the shoulder, Morant said, “I think I just said I probably wouldn’t have played, but I did. You can put your own answer. Regardless of what I say, it’s going to get summarized anyway on a little part. So I’ll let y’all put whatever y’all want out there for that.”
When a reporter prefaced a question by saying it wasn’t the first time he’d played through the injury, Morant interrupted: “I know. I’ve played like this all season, honestly. But it is what it is.” Asked if he felt he’d have to play through it for the rest of the season, Morant said, “I don’t know.”
Morant scored 24 points on 8-for-22 shooting (2-for-9 from 3-point range), with three rebounds, six assists, one steal and five turnovers against the Thunder, and the Grizzlies were outscored by 21 points in his 32 minutes. In his last seven games, Morant has shot 52 for 140 (37.1%) from the field and 6 for 46 (13%) from deep. It has been an inefficient season for Morant individually, and the shoulder issue could be playing a role in that, but Jenkins doesn’t want him turning down open looks.
“I want him to work through this,” Jenkins told reporters. “There’s no excuses. I mean, he’s getting great looks. The way that the ball’s moving, and he’s in a wide-open close-out situation with a packed paint, I trust him to shoot it. I mean, he’s struggling. We have other guys that are struggling, too. It’s not just on him. So I think the ball movement’s there, [as is] the intent on the shots we’re trying to create, and they’re not falling. We just gotta keep putting in the work. And [regardless of] what anyone’s dealing with, we just gotta keep focusing on just taking those shots with confidence.”
Jenkins also said that the Thunder are “absolutely” the most connected defensive team Memphis has played against, and “they threw a lot at him, with [high] pickup points and throwing multiple bodies and shifts at him.” He said that the Grizzlies handled their pressure “decently” and needed to respond to these situations with “collective creation,” but “we just didn’t make the shots when the ball got kicked out.” As a team, Memphis shot 6 for 23 (26.1%) on catch-and-shoot 3s against Oklahoma City (and Morant himself shot 1 for 4).
On Feb. 11, the Grizzlies had won 11 of 13 games and were second in the Western Conference. Since then, they’ve lost seven of nine and have fallen to fourth in the West. In a vacuum, though, this isn’t necessarily concerning — everybody loses to the Thunder, and the three losses that preceded this one were decided by a total of five points.
What’s concerning is that, from Feb. 12 to now, Memphis has allowed 121.9 points per 100 possessions in non-garbage-time minutes, the league’s fourth-worst mark in that stretch (they’d allowed 111.1 per 100, the league’s sixth-best mark, before that), according to Cleaning The Glass. And they’re banged up: All-NBA and Defensive Player of the Year candidate Jaren Jackson Jr. suffered a Grade 2 ankle sprain on Monday, and forward Santi Aldama, who really ties the room together, has missed the last two games with right calf soreness. Reserve forward John Konchar sat out against OKC due to right knee soreness, and newly signed big man Marvin Bagley III logged 15 minutes off the bench.
All of this is to say that this is a particularly inconvenient time for Morant to be limited by an injury. It’s also, as the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Damichael Cole pointed out, the second time Morant has mentioned after a game that he had decided to play hurt. After being listed as questionable with left high soreness going into Memphis’ home opener against the Orlando Magic in October, he suited up. He told reporters (via Action News 5) that “Grizz Twitter” had talked him into playing.
The good news for the Grizzlies is that the schedule is about to get easier: Their next four games are against the severely shorthanded Dallas Mavericks, then the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz. And it wasn’t all shoulder-related doom and gloom for Morant after Wednesday’s loss — he also told reporters, via Bluff City Media, that the Grizzlies had to “stay strong” despite the recent losses, as it’s a “long season” and there are more games to play.
“Hopefully, we just lock in, get guys back healthy and just go back to playing our basketball,” Morant said. “That’s pretty much it. I mean, we done been through a whole season together, ups and downs, hard practices, traveling on the road, fatigue, everything, but we always seem to respond. So it’s no different from here.”
