Eastern Conference Executive: Ja Morant is not as good as you think he is

Memphis Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant has been raising eyebrows across the league throughout the 2021-22 NBA season. The third-year player out of Murray State has improved in just about every statistical category you can think of and got a well deserved starting spot in this season’s All-Star Game.

Perhaps just as impressive as Morant’s game is the fact that the Grizzlies are currently the owners of the second best record in the NBA (45-22), trailing only the Phoenix Suns (53-13) as of this writing. A big reason for the team’s success has been the advancement in Ja Morant’s game.

Morant is scoring 27.5 ppg this season— a massive increase from the 19.7 he averaged last season. And the Grizzlies will finish well ahead of their 38-34 record from last season.

Ja Morant is one of the most electrifying players in the league, constantly making highlight-reel plays on a nightly basis.

So it was curious to see the results of an anonymous survey that polled 15 NBA scouts and executives about which young NBA point guard they would want on their team moving forward.

One NBA executive is not hopping aboard the Ja Morant hype train

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps asked 15 executives to rank six players still on their rookie deals in order of who they preferred to be on their team moving forward:

The results were clear and the executives chose in order: Luka Doncic, Ja Morant, Trae Young, LaMelo Ball, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Darius Garland.

Doncic (11) and Morant (4) were the only to players to receive first place votes.

ESPN shared some anonymous quotes made about some of the listed players. For Ja Morant, they mostly were glowing.

"“Ja has shown the ability to take a team to the next level,” a Western Conference scout said. “He’s shown great leadership, plus his jump, as far as development, has been pretty remarkable.”"

A different executive gave his reasoning for voting for Morant over Doncic.

"“I would probably put Luka ahead of Ja big picture, but I’ll put Ja ahead because of Luka’s conditioning [worries] every offseason,” an Eastern Conference scout said. “Luka’s more talented, but I like Ja’s approach more.”"

Then, the bombshell. One Eastern Conference Executive was very skeptical of Morant:

"“It’s weird to say this, but I don’t think [Morant] is quite as good as his public perception,” an East executive said. “If you put Shai on that Memphis team, he could potentially be doing a lot of the same things.”"

What an incredibly weird take. Yes, the Grizzlies are 12-2 without Morant this season, but that’s a testament to how deep this team is and how unselfish they are. It’s not a knock on Morant it’s a job well done by a team of professionals.

Sounds like a take from someone who got absolutely torched by Morant and is slightly bitter about it.