Ja Morant submits his own exclamation point to Grizzlies trade rumors

Do you ever watch something so incredible that you get mad at the person doing it? I’m not saying it’s a good feeling or one you necessarily want to admit to, but in a brief flash before your brain thinks “..but that was amazing” your brain begins with the clause “I hate it…”

But.

BUT.

IT’S REALLY GOOD.

Ja and Luke Kennard do this pretty “ring around the rosie” screen exchange that leads into Ja’s defender falling down. Ja has plenty of room to receive the inbounds pass, and, if I’m honest, he doesn’t do anything particularly shocking or new after that moment.

He just does Ja sh*t.

Ja just does this stuff, man.

He gets his defender on his back foot by moving forward really, really fast, then he stops to jump up in the air. But he doesn’t shoot while he’s up in the air; he shoots when he is falling back to earth like a dying private company satellite going out of commission long before the life expectancy promised to investors. He kicks his legs back to give him more breathing room (like Ja does), and just sinks a floater/jumper/runner thing straight through the net. Like nothing.

Ja Morant does things the Grizzlies simply couldn't replace

I repeat: Ja just does this stuff. He makes it look easy. It’s like he was building himself in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and used a GameShark to up his “hangtime” stat past the maximum.

“It only goes to ten, Ja! You can’t do these things!”

“Shut up.” Ja responds. Then he does the things.

Now, I can’t speak in too much detail about what the Grizzlies might have been able to negotiate were they to treat Ja Morant as an asset rather than a person and trade him. However, considering there is only one person in the entire league who seems to make shots like this routinely, I feel okay saying that this highlight would not have happened were Ja no longer on their team.

This is important to me because this highlight is my child, and it’s more important to me than anything has ever been to you. Is that weird? Now that I’ve said it out loud, it feels a little weird.