Internet addicted teenager Morant recently announced his retirement from the Internet.
If you know Morant, most of you will know that this young man has always been a good at high-intensity surfing, and his leisure time is almost soaked in his mobile phone, praising this teammate today and forwarding his wonderful collection tomorrow.
But just after he returned from injury and returned to the field, Morant once announced his retirement from the net, it is difficult to imagine that he suddenly became autistic in nature, more effective than Yang Yongxin's electric shock, it is some remarks of local fans that make Morant suddenly begin to doubt life.
I don't know if you remember, the early NBA was born a new historical record, the Grizzlies beat the Thunder by 73 points in a single game, creating the largest point difference in NBA history, and Morant returned from injury for more than 20 days in the first game, catching up with the Grizzlies and then fighting the Thunder, the result of this time became the Grizzlies losing at home with a 7-point difference - there are also many netizens in China who ridicule that this is equivalent to Morant losing 80 points.
Netizens are far away, but the Grizzlies home fans are close at hand, their speech is like a dagger stabbed Morant, "Just in the game, when I sprinted on the court, I also heard some of my fans on the sidelines shouting at me, saying that I should sit back." To be honest, I don't know what they're trying to say, I think it just makes things worse. ”
In the comeback game, Morant himself scored 16 points and 8 assists, but the Grizzlies only shot 38.6% of the team, and was defeated by the weak team Thunder, and some fans on the scene became speechless.
Morant made no secret of his lows, his teammates took a great 10-2 record when he was out of the game, and the discussion about whether the Grizzlies were better without Morant had been hyped up on the Internet for a while. So in the comeback battle, Morant actually wants to win more than anyone else.
"We won this opponent by 73 points and then I came back and the team lost, which was really frustrating. After missing 12 games with injuries, I was filled with the hope that I could trust my knees as much as I did in the first place, and I used basketball as an outlet for my emotions, and I came back when I was feeling good, so the result was really frustrating. But no one cared about Morant's own emotions, and it was supposed that the people sitting in the front row of the Grizzlies' home stadium should be well-off and loving Grizzlies fans, who were stabbed by such a group that made Morant break the defense.
After the game that day, the Internet addicted teenager sent a social media message saying, "I'm going to leave social media for a while, you really need my friends, you have my number anyway." ”
After saying that, Morant began to retreat, but the outside world is still stormy, and there are still many fans who firmly believe that the Grizzlies will be better without Morant.
They do have a strong argument, and the ups and downs of the Grizzlies' record so far this season, especially the gap in the team's performance on the defensive end, are really remarkable.
So far this season, Morant has played in games where the Grizzlies are 10-12, and absent games have taken a 10-2 record. Especially on the defensive end, Morant's defense before injury time the Grizzlies had to give up an exaggerated 115.9 points per 100 rounds, and the defensive efficiency was not only in the league to accompany the last seat, but also a big gap with the penultimate second; but in the 12 games that Morant missed, the Grizzlies lost only 98.1 points per 100 rounds, and the defensive efficiency in the same period was the first in the league, and it also pulled away from the second place.
Such a strong data contrast, it is inevitable that people will attribute the reason behind it to Morant's body, and a big hat of the team's cancer will be buckled.
In the face of these doubts, the first thing to admit is that Morant is indeed not a good defender today, for example, compared with his replacement Tyes Jones, according to the NBA's official website's defensive alignment data, Morant's defensive shooting rate before injury time reached 47.5%, and during his absence, Jones served as the starting pointer, which can reduce the shooting rate of the opposing player to 42.9%, considering that Jones is shorter and more athletically talented, such a number can reflect some of Morant's shortcomings on the defensive end.
As for the fact that the whole team played a heroic role during his absence, even in the first 5 games of Morant's injury, the Grizzlies did not fall behind for 1 second, which is simply a dominant play.
But if you just put the hat of the defensive black hole and the team's tumor on Morant, another question will arise: Morant played the vast majority of the Grizzlies in the 2020-21 season, and the team achieved the 7th defensive ranking in the league that season.
So the real picture should be summed up as follows: Morant is not a defensive tip, but the Grizzlies played far below expectations early in the season, and they should never be a team at the bottom of the defense.
The team woke up after Morant's absence, for many reasons, such as the sense of urgency brought about by the absence of the team's ace, Tyes Jones said, "I don't have the ability to play Jia Jr., so I have to pay more in the degree of effort, and everyone on the team knows that they should step up and carry through this difficult period." ”
There is also the comeback of Dillon Brooks, which normalizes the height of the Grizzlies' outside line, dillon's absence at the beginning of the season, the loss of Grayson Allen's Grizzlies, and only the 1.88m Melton play the No. 2 position, and the 1.96m Bain playing the No. 3 position, each position faces the problem of height loss;
Including the problem of the team's chemistry, last season's main interior combination of the Grizzlies was Valanciunas + Kyle Anderson, of which Anderson is an important pawn in the team's defensive system, and after changing to Adams + Jalan Jackson this season, the Grizzlies want to continue their highly aggressive, high-intensity defense, obviously taking time to polish.
Also, talking about game performance aside from the opponent's ability is tantamount to playing hooliganism.
The Grizzlies' 73-point win over the Thunder did not have the backcourt duo of Kyrgyz-Alexander and Josh Gidy, and it was Alexander who scored 23 points in the battle of Morant's return, and Gidy led the Thunder to a win with 19 points and 11 assists.
Including the absence of Morant before, the Grizzlies also faced the Lone Ranger in both battles, defeating opponents who were absent from Doncic and Porzingis, and the Lone Ranger completed his revenge when the duo returned.
Apparently, the fans who shout for Morant to "sit back" only think that the Thunder are a fish belly that has won 73 points, and do not consider their good form of winning 4 of their last 5 games, they will come to such an outrageous conclusion. Fortunately, everyone in the Grizzlies still understands people, such as Desmond Bane, who has played well this season, directly said that those who say that the Grizzlies will be better without Morant are pure nonsense, "and Morant wants to stay in the Grizzlies as long as he wants, because this is his team." ”
In fact, the story of the host's absence from the team still performing well is not uncommon in the sports world, most notably the "Ewing Theory", which has become a proper noun in the NBA. According to Kao, the so-called "Ewing Theory" was first proposed by dave Sillily, an NBA analyst at the time, in the mid-1990s, who found that whether Ewing was at Georgetown University or later joined the New York Knicks, his team would perform well in his absence, and even whether he was plagued by fouls and sat off the court, or was directly absent due to injury. With the 1999 NBA playoffs, the New York Knicks defeated the Pacers and advanced to the Finals in the East Showdown with Ewing's injury, and the influence of "Ewing Theory" reached its peak, and fans at that time also began to discuss "whether Ewing is really a New York cancer", and Cyrilly also believed that his theory was certified.
But the facts are: first, Ewing in the 1999 playoffs is nearly 37 years old, and the influence of the game is already greatly diminished; second, the Knicks have a good enough bench behind Ewing, and Canby joined New York that year, and he was already the league block king a season ago, after Ewing's absence. Canby averaged 18.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 3.3 blocks in four games against the Pacers, during which the Knicks lost 3-1 and finally lost 4-2; third, when the Knicks, who lacked Ewing, faced the Spurs led by Duncan and David Robinson in the Finals, they lost 1-4, and the gap in internal strength directly determined the championship.
So the "Ewing Theory" is almost ubiquitous in the sports world, in 1972 the Lakers played a 33-game winning streak after Elgin Baylor retired and won the championship trophy; in 2006 Gasol was injured in the semifinals of the men's basketball world championship, but his teammates defeated the peak of Greece, where even the United States team was willing to bow down; in the 2016 football European Championship finals, C Ronaldo was injured, but his teammates won the championship for him to beat France; including the 2020 CBA Finals, Yi Jianlian broke the Achilles tendon in the finals. The Guangdong team did not collapse because of this, they could still beat Liaoning to win the championship, and finally Su Wei carried the UAE League to the podium...
In the small sample incident, similar stories of the absence of the main player and the team's still heroic are happening at any time, but if someone thinks that these teams will get better without Gasol, C Ronaldo, and Yi Jianlian, then he must be crazy.
In fact, even if it is Patrick Ewing himself, the following table is enough to show that the Knicks without Ewing are "not bad", but under the observation of a larger sample, they will never be "better" than Ewing in the lineup.
In the face of these stories, perhaps what should really be reflected on is whether we are often too anxious to draw conclusions for everything in this impetuous world. Morant's defensive efficiency this season is a mess of 115.0 points per 100 possessions, but when Jaren Jackson returned last season, he lost 118.0 points per 100 possessions on the team, so hasn't the other core of the Grizzlies also become a tumor? How does a young team with both cores become competitive at the playoff level in the West every year?
Sometimes we're really forgetful, Morant isn't there, the Grizzlies have a good record, and we start to denounce the guy who isn't there.
But think about it, in 2019, the Grizzlies sent Conley to start rebuilding, who led the Grizzlies who could have been rotten to complete the recovery as quickly as possible, and led the team to the top eight in the West before the NBA shutdown that year?
Think again, the young Grizzlies have made the playoffs for two consecutive years, who will always play in a game of life and death? Against the Blazers in 2020, rookie Morant scored 35 points and 8 assists; against the Warriors in 2021, Morant scored 5 three-pointers, 35 points, 6 assists and 4 steals, leaving the former champion who was favored by everyone.
Also, the Grizzlies, who made the playoffs, faced the league's number one Utah Jazz, who like Don Quixote rushed to the windmill, fearlessly killed the league's best defensive player again and again, against the Jazz series, Morant averaged 30.2 points and 8.2 assists per game.
If I told you that almost all of Morant's plus-minus points were on the floor, would you think that Morant also caused the Grizzlies to lose?
For three years, after Coach Jenkins and Morant joined at the same time, the Grizzlies have maintained their strong style: fierce defense, sharp counterattacks, multi-player rotation, they have always had an inexhaustible depth of the lineup, often with half a team can win a lot of games. For example, not long ago in the battle with the Lakers, another master Dillon Brooks was taken away and isolated 1 hour before the opening, and they still washed down the Lakers with a whirlwind. Really, instead of the yin and yang weird Morant, it is better to take a good look at the bottomless lineup of the Grizzlies, only such a team can best withstand the invasion of injuries.
Morant failed to completely quit his Internet addiction, half a day after quitting the network, he returned to the social media to continue surfing, teammate Conchar's first career start, he got 11 points and 14 rebounds of the big double-double, Morant returned to the locker room and began to post "Conchar should be an All-Star", he is still a young man who can't put down his mobile phone after all.
If it is only because of some stupid remarks from the fans, he really does not have to care, relax and continue to be himself, his defensive performance after his comeback has improved compared with before.
But if morant really withdraws one day, I will personally raise my hands and feet to support, just like LeBron will temporarily shut down social media in the playoffs, and Redick even deleted the APP in order to maintain the status, and they have benefited a lot. So when Morant really stops playing social media, or drastically reduces the frequency of his posts, it may mean that he has to focus more and more energy on basketball.
After all, as the leader of an NBA team, Morant wants to make the team better and there is only one way, that is, to make himself better and better first.
Don't sit back, stand up.