Ja Morant trade grades: Trail Blazers land former All-Star, ending controversial Grizzlies tenure

The Portland Trail Blazers are acquiring Ja Morant from the Memphis Grizzlies, according to ESPN. The deal will send Jerami Grant and Kris Murray to Memphis. The deal ends Morant’s successful yet controversial tenure in Memphis after seven seasons.

Morant, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draftwon Rookie of the Year with the Grizzlies in 2020 and was the NBA’s Most Improved Player in 2022. He was, for the beginning of that Memphis tenure, one of the NBA’s best downhill scoring forces and looked like he was on track to become one of the faces of the NBA.

But injuries over the years sapped him of much of his power as a driver. He never developed a reliable 3-point shot or became a consistently impactful defender. After a series of off-court incidents led to multiple suspensions, Morant’s relationship with the Grizzlies further deteriorated early last season, when he questioned how he was being used by new Grizzlies head coach Tuomas Iisalo. Memphis attempted to trade him at February’s deadline, but he now moves on before free agency begins this offseason.

Morant, who turns 27 in August, played in just 20 games last season and was shut down in January due to an elbow issue.

Now he will attempt to resurrect his career in Portland, and he’ll do so on a team with several other former star guards. Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday are in place, and Deni Avdija just made his first All-Star team as Portland’s primary ball-handler. There are real questions about the fit in Portland, but if he can get back on track, this is a buy-low move for a player with superstar talent. So how did both sides do in the trade? We’re grading the deal below.

Portland Trail Blazers: D+

What they got: Ja Morant

Snap judgment: A buy-low swing on a star-level talent that makes little sense in the context of their roster

The charitable read on this trade for the Blazers is that they acquired a somewhat recent All-NBA-level talent effectively for nothing. Kris Murray was a nice defensive wing, but he was extension-eligible and unlikely to factor into the team’s future much given his shooting woes. Jerami Grant was a bad contract. While his shooting bounced back last season after he essentially stopped making 2s in the 2024-25 campaign, he’s not much of a defender or rebounder anymore and he turns the ball over too frequently for a role player.

The Blazers, in essence, turned $76 million or so in salary owed to Grant and Murray over the next two years into $87 million owed to Morant in that span, though Morant has a 15% trade kicker that could increase that figure if he does not waive it. There were no draft picks involved. Getting All-Stars to come to Portland has never been easy. This is a level of talent the Blazers rarely have access to. They took a swing. If it connects, this could be a great trade.

But man, is the fit here strange. Let’s start with the obvious. Why was Memphis so eager to dump Morant? Obviously the off-court issues factored into that decision, but more than anything, Morant has simply been declining as a player for several years now. The entire proposition of Morant as a superstar-level player was that his ability to get to the basket was so transformative to an offense that his team could abide his weaknesses in other areas. But if you actually look at his year-by-year numbers, his decline as a rim-scorer has dragged down basically every other component of his game.

Morant has never been a reliable 3-point shooter. He needs the ball in his hands to be effective. If he’s not using the ball to attack the basket and score at the basket relentlessly, the value he’s actually providing to his team is minimal. This is a problem because Portland quietly has a lot of players who need the ball.

The Blazers envision Morant starting next to Damian Lillard in their backcourt, according to Chris Haynes. Well … Lillard is also a former All-NBA point guard. He’s going to need the ball a fair bit as well. Both of them are small point guards who didn’t really defend even when they were healthier. They are now probably the worst starting defensive backcourt in the NBA. Having Toumani Camara at forward and Donovan Clingan at center helps, but when the Blazers traded for Jrue Holiday last summer, it seemed as though they were preparing to go all-in on defense and versatility. This is a sharp turn in the other direction.

We haven’t even mentioned Deni Avdija yet. By orders of magnitude, he is the best player on this team. He just made his first All-Star team largely by running the Portland offense. He was already one of the best downhill drivers in the NBA. Did Portland really need another one, especially since Avdija doesn’t come with nearly as many questions? Keep in mind: The Blazers had the third-lowest 3-point percentage in the NBA last season, and they just turned Grant, their best 3-point shooter last season, into Morant, who is a career 31.1% 3-point shooter. Who’s spacing the floor here aside from Lillard? The silver lining here is that Avdija’s defense took a big step back last year as his offensive role increased. Maybe with lower usage his defense reverts back to where it had been?

Further complicating matters is the fact that Avdija is on the best contract in the NBA. At just $13.1 million, his contract is essentially impossible to extend under most circumstances. The only way Portland can do so next summer is if it creates cap space to renegotiate his contract first. Acquiring Morant added money to their books, making it less likely that the can actually afford to take care of Avdjia before he becomes a free agent in 2028. How is Avdija going to feel if this deal not only makes the Blazers worse, but costs them the flexibility to pay him early? There is a real world in which this trade helps push Avdija out the door.

We haven’t even mentioned Portland’s other two important, far younger guards here. The Blazers signed Shaedon Sharpe to a four-year, $90 million extension last offseason. Scoot Henderson, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, is eligible for a rookie extension, and while he hasn’t lived up to his draft position, he made real progress last season as a shooter, defender and processor. Are they just viewed as backups now? Is Holiday? How do any of them feel about that? Are they trade candidates? ESPN reported after the trade that Portland is not seriously pursuing Jaylen Brown, so one possible solution to this guard glut is now off of the table. Nonetheless, there are not enough minutes here here for all of the guards in place. Some sort of follow-up move is needed to make this trade make sense, and until we see it, it’s hard not to question Portland’s plan here.

To Morant’s credit, he started to look a lot better in his last handful of games. He played eight games in December and January, averaged 22 points at a slightly more efficient clip than he had earlier in the year, and got to the rim a bit more often than he previously had in October and November. He’ll only be 27 on opening night. Maybe there’s still a superstar in here. That chance can’t be dismissed outright.

But if there isn’t still a superstar in there, it’s not at all clear how Morant will function on this roster. He does not have role player skills. He is small, he doesn’t defend and he doesn’t shoot consistently well. Either he he is the primary ball-handler here, in which case he lessens the impact of Lillard and Avdija, or he isn’t, and he may ultimately have to become an extremely expensive backup. Neither outcome here is ideal. This is one of the more puzzling trades of the offseason.

Memphis Grizzlies: B-

What they got: Jerami Grant and Kris Murray

Snap judgment: Addition by subtraction as the Grizzlies turn the page to their next era

The Grizzlies were never going to get significant asset value for Morant, but they didn’t exactly need to. They got so much back when they dealt Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. that they could afford to secure a lesser package in a Morant deal. Considering the reporting that they might have to attach draft capital back to move Morant, they did well here.

Grant is overpaid, but he’s a real NBA player whose shooting can help develop their younger players. Murray is another lottery ticket on the wing. They saved $11 million over two years. This package was, ultimately, probably a net positive for Memphis.

More than anything, this is addition by subtraction. The Grizzlies wanted to hand the team over fully to No. 3 overall pick Cameron Boozer. Keeping Morant in the building after everything that has happened over the past several years would have simply been untenable. They needed to turn the page on that era of franchise history, and now they’ve done so.

The youth movement is in full swing. The Grizzlies are very financially flexible and loaded with future draft assets. Even if the package in itself wasn’t especially strong, the Grizzlies did what they needed to do with this deal in the grander scheme of their rebuild. The Morant era was a disappointment, but the next one has a chance to be far better.