Ja Morant’s final game in a Memphis Grizzlies uniform may have come on Jan. 21, when he drove into a chase-down block on Atlanta’s Dyson Daniels at FedExForum and landed with his left elbow clipping the corner of the backboard on the way down.
That play ended up carrying more weight than anyone in the building knew at the time. A few days later, the Grizzlies said Morant had sustained a UCL sprain in his left elbow and would be reevaluated in three weeks. Two months later, he was ruled out for the rest of the season because the discomfort would not go away, leaving the two-time All-Star with no return date and, possibly, no clear future in Memphis.
The injury landed at the worst possible moment for a team that had already started moving toward a rebuild. Memphis had traded Jaren Jackson Jr. to the Utah Jazz for a package led by three future first-round picks before the deadline, a deal that looked a lot like the summer move that sent Desmond Bane to the Orlando Magic. The Grizzlies had won only one playoff series with Morant, Bane and Jackson as their core, and the front office had been aggressively looking for suitors for Morant while he was dealing with a calf injury.
Morant’s Memphis run had once looked like the start of something much bigger. He won the NBA’s Most Improved Player award at age 22 after averaging 27.4 points, 5.7 rebounds and 6.7 assists in the 2021-22 season, and in July 2022 he signed a five-year, $193 million contract extension. But the years since then have been defined as much by injuries and misconduct as by highlight plays, and the momentum that once surrounded the franchise has been steadily eroding.
That is why the Jan. 21 block now reads like a hinge point. Morant’s five-inch height disadvantage against Daniels never mattered on the play itself, but the landing did. What looked like one more fearless moment in a Memphis uniform became the injury that ended his season and, in all likelihood, forced the franchise to confront a future it had already begun planning for without him.
After the Feb. 6 trade deadline, general manager Zach Kleiman told the Memphis media that the issue was the team’s direction, not Morant personally. “This is about organizational direction now,” he said, adding, “This is not about Ja in particular.” A Western Conference director of pro personnel said there would be hesitation around Morant’s value, but also noted that “there’s certainly going to be hesitation, but there’s going to be several desperate teams.” Memphis had been unable to find a trade, but the bigger question is no longer whether the Grizzlies can reset around Morant. It is whether they already have decided not to.
