After the Oklahoma City Thunder blew their doors off in the first two games of their first-round playoff series, Game 3 was the Memphis Grizzlies' last real chance to save their season. Another loss would put them in a 3-0 hole, which no team in NBA history has ever overcome.
At first, it seemed like the Grizzlies might do just that. They jumped out to an early double-digit lead in the first quarter and were up 69-40 with three minutes to go before halftime. However, an injury to star point guard Ja Morant opened the door for the Thunder to pull off the second-biggest playoff comeback in the nearly past 30 years.
With 3:15 left in the second quarter, Scotty Pippen Jr. dished the ball to Morant on a 2-on-1 fast break. Morant tried to jump over Thunder wing Lu Dort for either a dunk or a layup, but Dort accidentally undercut him and sent him crashing to the floor.
Morant missed both free-throw attempts and immediately headed to the locker room. He was later ruled out for the game with a hip injury and was seen on crutches during the fourth quarter, according to ESPN's Tim MacMahon. After the game, interim head coach Tuomas Iisalo told reporters that Morant is set to undergo further evaluations Friday, but his status for Saturday's Game 4 is uncertain.
Even if Morant is somehow able to play through this injury, the Grizzlies are now dead in the water. They'd have to win four straight games — including two road games — against a 68-win Thunder team that blasted them by double digits in all but one of their seven head-to-head matchups this season. The bigger concern now is what this series means for Memphis moving forward.
In that respect, Game 3 was the perfect encapsulation of the Morant experience for the Grizzlies.
The highs and lows of Ja Morant
After the Grizzlies selected Morant with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft, he burst onto the scene with 17.8 points, 7.3 assists and 3.9 rebounds per game en route to the 2019-20 Rookie of the Year award. He looked like one of the NBA's most electrifying up-and-coming players thanks to his lightning-quick burst and explosive athleticism. Few players across the league could match Morant's ability to jump out of the gym.
However, Morant's penchant for high-flying dunks has come at a cost. After missing only 15 games over his first two seasons, Morant has missed at least 20 games in each of the past four.
Some of those absences were self-inflicted wounds. The NBA suspended him for eight games in March 2023 after he livestreamed a video in which he was "holding a firearm in an intoxicated state while visiting a Denver-area nightclub" on a team road trip. Three months later, the NBA handed him a 25-game suspension to begin the 2023-24 season after he was again seen brandishing a weapon on a friend's Instagram.
Morant nearly got into hot water with the league office again this season, as it investigated him "using his hands and arms to mimic shooting a gun toward the Golden State Warriors' bench" in an April 1 loss, according to ESPN's Shams Charania and Tim MacMahon. The league ultimately issued warnings but no penalties to both Morant and Warriors guard Buddy Hield, according to Charania. Morant did the same thing two nights later against the Miami Heat, which led to a $75,000 fine.
Following the fine, Morant pivoted into mimicking a grenade toss instead.
"That's my celebration now until somebody else has a problem with it, and I'll find another one," he told reporters in early April.
The Grizzlies might be willing to live with Morant's lack of good judgment if he could otherwise stay on the court. However, he played only nine games last season after returning from his suspension before he suffered an AC joint sprain in his right shoulder that wound up sidelining him for the year.
This season, Morant lasted only eight games before suffered a posterior hip subluxation and pelvic strains that wound up sidelining him for nearly three weeks. He got injured trying to catch a lob pass over Los Angeles Lakers center Christian Koloko, which caused him to swear off his high-flying maneuvers upon his return.
"I'm not trying to dunk at all," Morant told reporters in early December. "Y'all think I'm lying. I'm dead serious."
"Sometimes I get knocked out the air and [a foul] don't get called, and now I'm out longer than what I'm supposed to be," he added. "Sometimes the foul might get called; I still hit the floor, but after the game you might feel that little fall. So I just pick and choose, man. Hey, two points is two points. I get it done. That's all that matters."
That brings us right back to Thursday night, when Morant again got injured while seemingly trying to catch a body on Dort.
This series loss to the Thunder could force a reckoning in Memphis. Getting blasted by 51 points in Game 1 should have been a wake-up call to the organization. The Grizzlies were en route to their own blowout win in Game 3 prior to Morant's injury, but his inability to stay healthy over the past few seasons is a main reason why they've underachieved relative to the talent on their roster.
It won't get easier for the Grizzlies to build around Morant moving forward. He still has three years left on his max contract, and Desmond Bane is finishing up the first year of his five-year, $197.2 million near-max deal. If/when Jaren Jackson Jr. makes an All-NBA team in the next few weeks, he'll become eligible to sign a five-year, $345.3 million supermax extension this offseason.
Some teams have already pivoted away from three-max builds due to the NBA's new punitive second apron. A few of those that haven't — namely the Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia 76ers — might already be having second thoughts about that decision. The Grizzlies aren't an apples-to-apples comparison since Morant and Bane are each earning around 25 percent of the salary cap opposed to the 35 percent that Paul George, Joel Embiid, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant are receiving, but JJJ's upcoming extension talks could put them in a bind.
Luckily, the Grizzlies have full control over their first-round picks after this season, and they don't have much other money on their books at the moment. Brandon Clarke ($12.5 million) is the only other Memphis player aside from the Big Three who's set to earn eight figures next year. Still, OKC has the league's biggest draft cache and just won 68 games this season even though Chet Holmgren played only 32. The gap between the Thunder and the rest of the league might only get bigger as time goes on.
The Grizzlies might decide that their first-half performance in Game 3 is proof that this core can hang tough with the NBA's elite. With more coaching stability next season — they fired head coach Taylor Jenkins only three weeks before the playoffs began — perhaps they can cement themselves in the league's upper echelon. After all, they were the No. 2 seed in the West heading into the All-Star break this season.
However, Morant missed eight games in March and the Grizzlies went 2-6 over that stretch, pushing them out of a comfortable playoff lock and into play-in territory. Although they blew out the Kyrie Irving-less Dallas Mavericks in the final play-in game to secure the No. 8 seed, the way they sputtered over the final two months of the year hardly inspires much confidence in this group moving forward.
Therein lies the conundrum for Memphis this offseason. Can the Grizzlies count on Morant as their franchise cornerstone moving forward? Or will his injury history and/or off-court concerns prevent them from ever reaching the peak that OKC has this year?