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It didn't take long for Ja Morant to score his first basket in 235 days. The Memphis Grizzlies superstar wrestled away an offensive rebound and finished a reverse layup early in the first quarter of Tuesday night's game against the New Orleans Pelicans, his highly anticipated season debut after missing the first 25 games of the 2023-24 season due to a suspension.
Ja Morant records his first bucket of the season with the Grizzlies 🔥pic.twitter.com/tJMD3ipWh1
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) December 20, 2023
Morant last took the floor for the Grizzlies in Game 6 of his team's first-round loss to the Los Angeles Lakers during last season's playoffs. It's been a rocky path for both player and team ever since, another gun flashed on social media prompting Morant's career-changing suspension and Memphis being continually ravaged by injuries to key contributors.
The absences of both Brandon Clarke and Steven Adams played a part in the Grizzlies' disappointing playoff defeat to the Lakers, and neither frontcourt stalwart will play at all in 2023-24. Marcus Smart and Luke Kennard have missed significant chunks of the schedule, too.
Ja Morant makes long-awaited return to struggling Grizzlies
Memphis entered Tuesday's action at 6-19, tied with the rebuilding Portland Trail Blazers for the second-worst record in the Western Conference. While the struggles of young players like Zaire Williams, David Roddy and Jake LaRavia to pick up the slack of their unavailable teammates have hurt Taylor Jenkins' team in the season's early going, both Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. continue to cement themselves as franchise cornerstones.
Thrust into a primary scoring and playmaking role for the first time in his career, Bane has thrived offensively despite an unenviable supporting cast and overall environment on that side of the ball. He's averaging 24.6 points and 5.2 assists per game, both career-highs, while posting a solid true shooting percentage of 58.6. The Grizzlies' league-worst offensive rating is +6.5 points better with Bane on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass.
Jackson hasn't been quite as impressive offensively as Bane, nor reached the Defensive Player of the Year peak he managed in 2022-23. He exploded for 85 points across two games last week, though, evidence of Jackson's burgeoning comfort creating with the ball. Expect him to be both more efficient and more disruptive defensively now that Morant's return slots Jackson's peg down a place in Memphis' offensive hierarchy.
The Grizzlies have a steep hill to climb just to get back in play-in tournament contention amid a stacked Western Conference. They're currently seven and-a-half games back of the 10th-place Phoenix Suns, with the all-in Golden State Warriors between them in the standings.
But Memphis has remained stout defensively despite outlier opponent 3-point shooting, and Morant's presence will make life far easier on not just Bane and Jackson offensively, but all of his teammates. That Morant's taken personal accountability for his team's disappointing start is another sign it's still a bit too early to count the Grizzles out entirely as he finally re-takes the floor.
“Yes, there is definitely some guilt in that,” Morant said Friday when if he felt responsible for Memphis' win-loss record. “Obviously, I am not on the floor and obviously nobody likes losing. Our job is to go out there and get a win. I take full responsibility of that even though I am not on the floor. The decisions I made did not allow me to be out there and go to battle with my team.”
