He is amazing. But he is a turnstile on defense, so that's not good. Green could get by him without any move - just with straight drives. Still he is one of the best guards and will be for a while. Has been my favorite non-Rocket for a couple years already.
I think we are finally seeing a changing of the guard in the NBA. With guys like Lebron, KD, Kawhi, Dame, Harden etc going down new stars are coming up. Ja Morant's talent is obvious, with his profile and skills you knew he would be a superstar. If I had the no 1 pick back then I would have traded down from Zion since Zion actually had the higher risk-reward profile. Makes me think about Scoot and Wemby tbh. Maybe 3 yrs from now Scoot is acknowledged to be the best player in the class and Wemby is still dealing with various foot injuries.
I love watching Ja Morant, he is probably my favourite non-Rocket, but torching the Rockets like he did today just wasn't cool, man
I will respectfully defer to my rocket brotheren in evaluations of guards that are defensive turnstiles.
As well you should. Our guards last night died every single time the Grizz set a pick on them; they might as well have just laid down after the pick because they never even attempted to fight through or around any of them. But for real, maybe turnstile was too harsh. Ja is better defensively than Trae, who just floats around like a leaf being blown in the wind.
He's a turnstile but if the turnstile was armed with a surface to air missle that shot you in the butt every so often when you passed by
He will actually try to block your shot even if he has to come from a full sprint from the other side of the court. That is, he values possessions and not giving teams easy baskets. Not that he is a good defender, but let’s be honest here, the grizzlies knew they were going to beat the Rockets without having to play a difficult defensive game. They were just having fun with the rockets. I suspect tonight you will see a grittier game.
Ja is easily the most exciting player in the league Im surprised the grizzlies didnt try to improve at all in the offseason. They clearly werent good enough to win
They usually try to abuse other teams draft picks, more than find a free agent to sign. for example, trading Jonas Valanciunas for the 10th pick in the draft and getting Zaire Williams. The grizzlies knew they wanted to get the lumberjack out of the way of Ja so they made the move. The grizzlies are one of the better teams at finding good players lower in the draft so they use their offseason to bring in younger talent. the grizzlies locked up/ signed: Steven Adams, Brandon Clark, John Konchar and Tyus Jones. This off-season.
dude's game relies too much on athletism he ain't gonna age gracefully unless he can significantly improve his skillset somehow in my humble opinion.