The Grizzlies’ physics-defying franchise player seems like a daredevil heir to Allen Iverson.
It wasn’t long ago that the Grizzlies were one of the lousiest teams in the NBA. In 2018–19, the year they drafted Morant, Memphis was tied for the seventh-worst record in the league , and the previous season they’d been even worse, finishing an abysmal 22–60.
But they’ve proven to be a remarkably well-run organization, with a talented young coach in Taylor Jenkins and a front office that’s drafted well and shown itself to be exceptionally adept at identifying undervalued players. Second-year wing Desmond Bane, who looks like a budding All-Star, was picked by the Boston Celtics with the last pick in the first round of the 2020 draft and promptly purloined by Memphis in a heist of a trade; the team’s second-leading per-game scorer, Dillon Brooks , was originally a 2017 second-round pick of the Houston Rockets. Former first-rounder Jaren Jackson Jr, healthy after playing only 11 games last season, seems finally on his way to manifesting the enormous potential that made him the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft.But Morant is the team’s crown jewel, the rare superstar who feels like a “franchise player” in talent, temperament, and aura all at once. For all his otherworldly gifts, Morant was a late bloomer who was lightly recruited out of high school and, by, couldn’t even dunk until his senior year. He accepted a scholarship to Murray State—a respected mid-major program but far from a blueblood program like Kentucky or Duke—where, by his sophomore season, he’d become one of the biggest stars in the country. Like the aforementioned Lillard, another under-recruited guard who played his college ball at unheralded Weber State, Morant is a superstar who plays with all the edge of a guy on the verge of being cut.There are two players from my basketball-watching lifetime whom Morant most reminds me of. The first is Allen Iverson, who was a stylistically different player than Morant in many ways but similar in both a physical and almost spiritual sense. Like Morant, Iverson was undersized and utterly fearless, a graceful and hyperathletic superhero who routinely humiliated much larger players. The second is Derrick Rose. In 2011, Rose, an incandescently gifted and explosive point guard, became the youngest player in NBA history to win the MVP award, at age 22. He seemed destined to be the league’s next great icon, the core of a Bulls team that looked to compete for championships for years to come. Then, in the 2012 Playoffs, Rose tore his ACL, and then his meniscus the following year. He’s still in the league and has reinvented himself as an effective role player, but he seems likely to become the first former MVP in history to not make the Basketball Hall of Fame.The Rose comparison is a fraught one in Morant’s case, because if there has been one persistent worry about Morant’s career ceiling, it’s his health. He’s already missed 13 games this season, and his daredevil approach to the game has prompted durability concerns going back to pre-draft evaluations.
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