Memphis just panic-sold the most exciting point guard they’ve had since the Mike Conley days for two years of a 32-year-old Jerami Grant and a million dollars cash, and I need you to sit with that for a second.
Shams Charania had it first, as he always does:
https://x.com/ShamsCharania/status/2071693198171226335
The terms: Ja Morant, age 26, under contract for two more years at max money, averaging 19.5 points and 8.1 assists in 2025-26 before his season fell apart at 20 games played. In return, Memphis gets Grant ($34M-plus per year, 32 years old, trending the wrong direction), Kris Murray (the throw-in who exists to make this technically a trade), and a cool million in cash. No picks. No upside. Not even a draft-day flier on someone’s nephew.
The franchise’s stated rationale will be “off-court concerns” and “asset accumulation,” because that’s what front offices say when they want to sound like adults while shoveling dirt over a disaster. And I’m not going to pretend Ja’s track record doesn’t exist. The 8-game suspension. The 25-game suspension. The confrontation with the coaching staff last season. The guy has handed Memphis real, documented reasons to worry.
But Memphis never actually committed to solving it. They didn’t build around him. They didn’t trade from a position of strength when they had one. They let the asset depreciate all the way to the floor and then cashed out at the absolute bottom. That’s not asset management. That’s a front office that didn’t know what it was doing with a star and eventually got tired of trying.
Morant’s first public comment after the deal: “It’s like starting all over again.” That sentence is doing a lot of work. It’s either the most hopeful thing he’s said in three years, a quiet indictment of everything that happened in Memphis, or both at once.
Now, here’s the part that’s honestly kind of exciting — and I say this as someone whose first reaction was to laugh at the Grizzlies for twenty minutes. Portland is actually swinging. Damian Lillard is coming back from his torn Achilles for 2026-27, hungry and with a point to prove after a lost year in Milwaukee. Jrue Holiday, one of the most reliable two-way guards in the sport, is locked in at $34.8M. Now add Morant. HC Micah Nori said after the deal: “The way he was talking, the way he looked … the intent he had, you could just tell in his face that he missed basketball. He assured that we were going to get the best Ja.” That backcourt is either going to be spectacular or a complete soap opera with better uniforms. Could go either way, honestly, and that uncertainty is the most interesting Portland has been in years.
Kevin O’Connor is already suggesting this is a setup trade — that the Blazers could turn around and send Jrue Holiday, Scoot Henderson, and Shaedon Sharpe with picks to Boston for Jaylen Brown, with Morant anchoring the new core. Which is worth watching as much as anything in the rest of the NBA offseason.
But this isn’t Portland’s failure. This is Memphis’s. Morant is gone. Desmond Bane is gone. Jaren Jackson Jr. is gone. All three cornerstones out the door since last year’s sweep at the hands of Oklahoma City. LeBron’s still deciding what he’s doing, other stars are picking their landing spots, and the Grizzlies are standing there holding Jerami Grant and a million bucks.
My sister texted me the second the trade broke: “wait who’s even on the Grizzlies now.” I had nothing for her.
