Memphis Grizzlies: Ja Morant sees a 2.5x increase in NBA All-Star votes in latest returns, leaps into second-place

Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant continues his ascension to becoming an NBA superstar and the latest NBA All-Star voting returns show that.

After being named the NBA’s Western Conference Player of the Week in consecutive weeks and leading the Grizzlies on a 10-game winning streak, Morant has found himself in the upper echelon of NBA players.

Being featured in nationally televised games has certainly helped Morant catapult himself into second-place among guards in the latest NBA All-Star voting returns.

Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant amassed 1 million new All-Star votes in a week

Morant’s spectacular play enabled him to leapfrog Dallas’ Luka Doncic for second-place among Western Conference guards.

In just one week’s time, Morant has made a splash with NBA fans, earned nearly a million votes since last week’s returns were announced.

Here’s the breakdown in voting for Morant so far. He was in third-place among Western Conference guards on Jan. 6 with 669,033 total votes.

On Jan. 13, the NBA announced Morant has moved into second-place with a vote total of 1,633,313.

This means Morant amassed 964,280 votes in the past week alone— a staggering amount when you put in to context some of the other players and how many votes they’ve earned.

If you went by just the votes he accumulated from Jan. 6 through Jan. 13, his votes would be more than players like Carmelo Anthony, Karl-Anthony Towns, Devin Booker, Chris Paul and Donovan Mitchell have earned during the entire voting period.

Morant is on pace to become the second player in the history of this franchise to be a starter in an NBA All-Star game and the first time the team has been represented in the game since Marc Gasol (2016-2017).

Morant currently has the tenth-most votes regardless of conference or position.

The next batch of voting returns will be released by the NBA on Jan. 20.