Ja Morant took 30 shots on Monday. He made 22 of them. His 52 points accounted for 74 percent of the Grizzlies' points.
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There has never been more talent in the NBA than there is right now. You could close your eyes and pick a League Pass game and you’ll have a good chance of seeing Ja Morant doing something that will bring you out of your seat by the end of the night. For a long time, Stephen Curry was the league’s must-see superstar. Almost every game he would pull some magic act out that you’d never seen before.
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Morant’s nightly antics continue to test the limits of athletic possibility. Gravity-defying dunks, 360 layups in traffic, it’s baffling what this guy can do on a basketball court. He’s the most ferociously freaky NBA athlete since prime Derrick Rose, and on Monday night, en route to a career-high 52-point effort as Memphis defeated San Antonio 118-105, he dropped two more highlights that you have to see to believe.
First, with just over two minutes remaining in the first half, he caught an outlet pass just past half court, casually angled toward the rim, and then, with one foot outside the paint, decided to try and end poor Jakob Poeltl’s life with an absolute hammer of a dunk.
A night for the record books for @jamorant ?
? 52 points (franchise record)
? 22-30 FG (most made FGs in a single game) pic.twitter.com/Dgg1ymUCna— Memphis Grizzlies (@memgrizz) March 1, 2022
That has a case for dunk of the year, and to think, it was merely a prologue to one of the most outrageous highlights you’ll see this season. It was just a few minutes later when Morant leaped into the air to catch a full-court pass from Steven Adams, and without coming down, all in one motion, twisting and falling out of bounds, tossed in about an 18-footer from the baseline to beat the first-half buzzer.
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I don’t even know what to say about that. The combination of athleticism and power required to even get that shot to the rim, let alone make it, is extraordinary.
Morant took 30 shots on Monday. He made 22 of them. His 52 points accounted for 74 percent of the Grizzlies’ entire starting five’s output. And this is after he put up 46 points in a victory over Chicago two days ago. Morant now owns the three highest single-game scoring outputs in Grizzlies history and five of the top seven.
