I’ve pretty much already totally forgotten about the Grit’n’Grind era of Memphis basketball. For one thing, it wasn’t very much fun because defense is antithetical to the whole point of basketball IMHO, and for another, all the big names from back then are donezo. Zach Randolph, out of the league. Marc Gasol, partied too hard during the championship parade and will never recover from the hangover. Mike Conley, busy stinking it up hard for the Jazz.
Ja Morant is better (okay, debatable) and more exciting (that’s the important part) than all three of those dudes right now. Maybe the Grizzlies aren’t winning as many games as back then, maybe the franchise is sort of directionless, maybe they’d be better if the got MarShon Brooks back, there’s a lot of maybes. But the certainty is that Morant is a beast, and also a monster, and if you combine those terms together you get beastmonster. Which is what he is as well.
It was looking like a fairly poor game for him in this one, as he was quiet-ish in the first three quarters, but he turned it on and put his heel on the throat of the Timberpuppies. One of the key steps in the development of a young player is learning how to win games. It’s cliche, sure, and some teams like the 76ers obviously didn’t believe in that, but straight-up winning games due to your own beastitude is, like, step 5 on the way to becoming a Hall-Of-Famer.
Step 1 is learning how to dribble without looking at the ball. I’m still working on that one, don’t judge me. I’ll get there eventually.