Why Ja Morant could be ‘major steal’ for the Blazers
Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O'Connor reacts to the surprising trade that sends the point guard to Portland - where he'll now be alongside Damian Lillard and Deni Avdija. Check out the full conversation on "The Kevin O'Connor Show" and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
I think he could potentially be a major steal for Portland.
I feel like everybody with Ja is so focused on the lack of games played, on the off-court stuff, the gun stuff, throwing the coach under the bus.
Yeah, like, obviously there's a lot of concerns with Ja Morant.
That goes without saying.
Even at, at the peak of his career, he was an iffy shooter, an iffy defender.
Like, there was I've always been a Ja Morant skeptic, to be totally transparent with you.
However, if you look at last season, the first 12 games of the year that he played, he was garbage.
He absolutely sucked.
22 points per 36 minutes on below 50% true shooting.
Only 18% of his shots came at the rim, 51% came from mid-range, 31% from three-point range.
He was just not getting to the rim.
He was settling for jumpers.
He looked awful.
And then he was out for a month, and then he came back and he played eight games.
In those eight games, his numbers were basically identical to his two all-star seasons in terms of scoring efficiency, in terms of shot distribution.
34% of his shots came at the rim, 46% from mid-range, 20% from three.
Basically the same as what he did in his two years as an all-star.
So I'm not saying that Ja Morant is gonna go back to being an all-star for sure next season, but what I am saying is that there's a chance Ja Morant goes back to becoming an all-star next season, especially now that you plug him into this Portland Trail Blazers team that could be a potential contender next year if they go get Jaylen Brown when they already have an all-star in Deni Avdija.
They have so many good role players on that team.
They're deep, and now they have a new really good head coach in Joe Inori, who I'm very bullish on with his first NBA head coaching opportunity.
So I think this Ja acquisition is a major, major buy low for Portland.
And who knows?
Maybe they get Jaylen Brown coming up next, and we look at this roster in March or April on the, on the doorstep of the postseason and we're like, "Wow, look what Portland did with these savvy acquisitions and how smart they were."
So we'll see what happens.
