Ja Morant is a great rookie, by far the best out of all the 2019 draftees right now. And he’ll probably remain by far the best even after a certain Fatty McWaddle makes his return from whatever fat-related ailment is currently sidelining him. The ROTY of the Year award is his to lose, but he’s not going to be losing it unless something really weird happens.
Despite his greatness, I am not detecting NBA-wide hype levels like I should be for a rookie of his caliber. What’s the deal? I mean, yeah, there’s a bunch of hype, but I should be sensing earth-shattering amounts. And I’m sitting here, and my earth is decidedly non-shattered. It’s all in one piece. Except for the part that fell off when Zion Williamson tripped and fell and knocked a big chunk of crustal matter right into space.
When I asked “what’s the deal?”, I was asking that question already knowing the answer. Devious! Clearly, the deal is that Morant is not shooting enough threes. The calendar year is now 2020, and we are firmly in an era of the NBA where all the young people care about is three-point shooting. They still like crossovers and dunks and stuff, but what really gets the people going is threes. And Morant just isn’t a high-volume three chucker right now. His percentage from out there is good, 40 percent, so you know that he’s at least capable of shooting them. He just needs to up the attempts. By a lot. 1 make on about 2 attempts is not cutting it. Maybe in 1997 that would’ve cut it, but as I said, the current year is 2020.
Then again, he probably wouldn’t have the insanely high volume of replay-able plays (just check this video; so many replays) if he parked himself behind the arc and chucked like he was Jaren Jackson Jr., so it’s a tradeoff.