{"id":137845,"date":"2025-09-12T14:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/137845\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T14:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:11:07","slug":"why-ja-morants-next-season-could-be-his-most-dominant-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/137845\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Ja Morant\u2019s next season could be his most dominant yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Entering his 7th NBA season, Ja Morant is at a turning point in his career<\/a>. He\u2019s entering his prime and is at the point where he has to start making waves to cement his legacy in the pantheon of the NBA. He\u2019s arguably as talented as some of the all-time greats, but needs the overall team success to go along with that talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Morant, 26, is at an age where some of the legends of this game were beginning to win their first championship. Lebron James and Shaquille O\u2019Neal were 27, and Michael Jordan was 28. Recent stars like Jayson Tatum and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander were 26, respectively, when they raised their first Larry O\u2019Brien championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest difference between Morant and the stars mentioned is that he has gotten in his own way to prevent himself from reaching these great heights in one way or another. The reasons range from unlucky and unfortunate injuries to off-court issues. The bottom line is, if Morant has a clean year, there\u2019s no stopping the heights that he can take his career and the Memphis Grizzlies franchise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Everything is lining up<\/p>\n

The past three seasons for Morant have been up and down, to say the least. A mix of suspensions, lawsuits, injuries, questionable punishments for celebrations, and the ridicule of the national media led Morant to be in and out of the lineup and, at times, not look like himself. However, it seems like Morant is getting on the other side of this storm that\u2019s been over his career.<\/p>\n

At the end of last season, leading into the summer, Morant seemed more mature, happy, and at peace. In his exit interview, he was quoted as saying<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m able to do what I love at the highest level. I\u2019m not happy that I wasn\u2019t able to be on the floor as much as I wanted to for my team. I\u2019m not happy that we weren\u2019t able to achieve our goal, but like I said earlier, there are positives in everything. I know what this offseason looks like for me already, and it just makes me excited going into next season.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been constantly involved in his Twelve Time AAU team. Showing up at tournaments, being energetic on the sideline, and coaching a bit in the process. He famously went on his \u201cMake Them Watch\u201d world tour sponsored by Nike in relation to his newest signature shoe<\/a>, the Ja 3, which was released. Fans saw Morant laughing, smiling, dancing, and flying through the air like the old Morant. <\/p>\n

Additionally, he was on the recent cover of SLAM Magazine, also marketing his new shoe. He\u2019s recently been seen enjoying himself at an NBA Youngboy concert, on a Twitch stream, having fun with his videographer and close friend by the name of \u201cShotByNie\u201d playing NBA 2K26, \u00a0and as of yesterday, he and his teammate Jaren Jackson Jr. made a surprise cameo on famous streamer IShowSpeed\u2019s live stream in Memphis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The NBA is even starting to change its tune about Morant. He has been featured more on their social media pages, and he\u2019s a big reason why the Grizzlies are getting an international game this year in Germany and London. In July, he was awarded the AT&T Dunk of the Year<\/a> for his double-clutch dunk against the Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n

All of this fanfare goes back to Morant\u2019s famous quote, \u201cA happy Ja is a scary Ja.\u201d Simply, he seems to be happy. He\u2019s on the tail-end of all the controversies that have riddled his career, and he\u2019s going back to enjoying life like every other 26-year-old NBA player should be.<\/p>\n

On the court, he has a new coach that had him back to his ALL-NBA caliber of play. Under head\u00a0coach Tuomas Iisalo, Morant averaged 27 points and 6.2 assists per game to end last season. With an entire offseason and training camp, Iisalo and Morant can build a relationship and bond that will maximize his talents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Grizzlies have also acquired players this offseason who are archetypes that fit Morant’s play style. Morant has thrived with elite perimeter defenders around him. Memphis added Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Cedric Coward. Morant had his best seasons with physically imposing bigs like Steven Adams and Jonas Valanciunas. Memphis added Jock Landale and PJ Hall to fill those gaps.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most intriguing, he\u2019s never played with a pure scorer and shot creator off the bench like Ty Jerome. Jerome will be able to play behind and alongside Morant. Jerome, relieving some of the scoring and ball-handling duties from Morant, will allow him to have more offensive opportunities with less defensive attention on him.\u00a0The basketball gods seem to be smiling on Morant right now. It\u2019s just up to him to take advantage of the opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Entering his 7th NBA season, Ja Morant is at a turning point in his career. He\u2019s entering his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-137845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}