Two years after winning Rookie of the Year, the second-pick rookie of the 2019 NBA Draft led the league by an average of 35.0 points per game in the first three games of the 2021-22 season. The number of times he's scored at least 37 points in a game (twice) is the sum of his first two NBA seasons.
Morant's Grizzlies are expected to return to the playoffs after a future-focused offseason through trades and draft picks, winning the first two games before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers by three points in the second game. Back-to-back at staples center on weekends.
Ever since Morant succeeded as a 20-year-old rookie in a position that most newcomers struggle with, star status has looked more like a real-time problem.
How did Morant get to this level and is it sustainable? What does Morant's performance tell us about his future potential? Let's break up his explosive start before the Grizzlies' showdown against the Portland Trail Blazers (10 p.m. ET) on Wednesday night.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > the reason for Morant's crazy scores</h1>
Morant's impressive early performance was in stark contrast to last season, when the Grizzlies were the only team in the NBA that didn't have a 20-point scorer. (The Orlando Magic didn't end with a single point after trading U-turn scorer Nikola Vucevic before the trade deadline.) With an average of 19.1 points per game, Morant is one of three Memphis players who average between 17 and 20 points per game, tied for first place on any team.
Since the 2020-21 season, the Grizzlies have been without the other two leading scorers. Memphis traded starting center Jonas Valanciunas (17.2 points per game) to the New Orleans Pelicans in the summer, while winger Dillon Brooks (17.1 points) has not played this season due to a fractured left hand. While Desmond Bain (19.3 points) and D'Antoni Melton (18.3 points) are currently improving in terms of scoring, replacing Valanciunas with low-usage Steven Adams has made the Grizzlies' offense more focused on Morant.
After shooting, free throwing or erroring in 26 percent of Memphis games in his rookie season and 27 percent last season, Morant's usage soared to 35 percent in 2021-22 — second-place NBA top-ranked Washington Wizards guard Bradley Beale, who finished second in scoring last season.
If we increased his assist rate at Morant (9.3 percent to 100 team times) and put him on the Grizzlies offense, this measure I called the total share sense 'combined,' only the TADE young Atlanta Hawks (44.7 percent of the play, either in use or assist) ahead of Morant (44.5 percent), which makes Memphis suddenly one of the league's most day-focused offenses.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" > when efficiency meets the increased weight</h1>
So far, Morant has added nearly 16 points per game in the 2020-21 season, of which about 5.5 points — just over a third — can be attributed to his increased usage. Another 1.6 points came from increasing his playing time per game from 32.6 to 35.3. That makes much of the improvement (8.8 PPG) the product of Morant's more effective score than the 2020-21 season, when his true shooting percentage dropped from near the league average (0.556) as a rookie to 0.537.
Typically, a player's larger share of the team's offense translates into more difficult shots. This is not the case for Morant, as measured by Second Spectrum's Quantitative Shot Quality (qSQ) metric, where his average shots are better than in the previous two seasons. According to qSQ, taking into account the location and type of shots and the distance of nearby defenders, Morant's shooting difficulty ranks among players who made at least 500 shots in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. Of the players who have made at least 30 shots this season, Morant's number of shots in qSQ is the league average.
In part, the improvement in shooting reflects Morant's almost entire reduction in mid-range attempts from his offensive diet. According to NBA Advanced Stats, he made just two of his 69 shots this season between the paint zone and the three-point line, down 50 percent from last season.
Instead of adding mid-range shots this season, Morant shot mostly in the penalty area near the basket, shooting 48 percent — up from 38 percent in the 2020-21 season. Heading into Tuesday's game, only two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo (37 in four games) has more shots on goal in the penalty area than Morante in three games (33).
It may just be the product of Morant getting healthier in the summer. As a rookie, 45 percent of his shots are in the box, a percentage that rose more than half in his first three games last season before Morant suffered a class 2 ankle sprain that left him out for more than two weeks and visibly weakened his explosiveness.
For Morant, more frequent layups should be sustainable, especially since Valanciunas no longer occupies the lower space. Morant's progress as a Terminator will be harder to continue. Morant shot 58 percent from the field in his rookie season compared to 60 percent last season, and he shot an incredible 73 percent from inside the box. This, combined with a warm-up start to three-point shooting (8 points out of 18, 44 percent, slipped to 30 percent in the 2020-21 season) was a major source of Morante's efficiency.
In fact, if Morant could combine his shot quality with a slightly improved shooting percentage than he did in his rookie season, his effective shooting percentage (eFG) could reach around 55 percent. That would be a significant 49% improvement last season, but well below the 64% eFG we saw in the first three games.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > where will Morant and Memphis go? </h1>
First, the bad news: Leading the league in scoring in three games doesn't mean much in history. Since the 1996–97 season, these players are more likely to advance outside the top 20 NBA Finals (5 times) than to lead the league (4 times). That happened last season when early leader James Harden (who averaged 37 points per game in the first three games) saw his scoring average plummet after that — in part because he joined the Brooklyn Nets through trades for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Of course, this is not Morant's real goal. What's more, his ability to improve shot quality with high usage suggests that the Grizzlies can more aggressively focus their offense on Morant's skills. That makes sense because Memphis built around him and Jaren Jackson Jr., suggesting that prioritizing quality role players who can make room for Morant and defend effectively may be more important than finding extra shot creators.
It would be interesting to see how Brooks adjusted when he returned, probably sometime in November. When we last saw Brooks, he averaged 25.8 points in five series games that the Grizzlies lost to the Utah Jazz in the first round of last year's playoffs. Meanwhile, Brooks' preference for mid-range shooting has occasionally dragged down Memphis' offense, and he will have to adapt to more minor roles if Morant continues to cook.
Although Morant has played, he may still find it difficult to crack the Western Conference All-Star backcourt. Consider the West returning eight guards from last season's All-Star team as both The Suns' Devon Booker and Utah's Mike Conley were picked as injury benches before adding nine All-Stars to Russell Westbrook through a trade (he missed in 2021).
At some point, if Morant continues to lay down and hit three-pointers as frequently as he did in his first three games with the Grizzlies, his worth will be undeniable. For Morant, a strong start may not immediately turn into a star, but it's further proof that the 22-year-old is on the right track.