SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED
SI.COM
APRIL 2022
33To brace himself for a season of downhill drives,
they’d re-create the contact he’d face in an actual game.
Dribbling off ball screens, Morant felt four to six hands
on him at all times before he was pounded at the rim with
a pad, often wielded by his dad. They wouldn’t move on
to the next drill until he made seven or eight out of 10.
While he rested at night, the work didn’t stop. Morant
studied how opponents guarded him and the Grizzlies
last year. “He’s an elephant,” Draper says. “He remembers
every single detail.”
The early work paid dividends, as confidence in his
outside shot made Morant one of the league’s premier
offensive weapons to start the season. But a month
in, he was forced back to the Dark much sooner than
expected. The spectacle we’ve seen since was so close
to never happening at all.
W
HEN HE WAS 6, Morant fell off a trampoline
and broke his arm. Tee was at work when he got
a call from his sister. He could hear Ja screaming in the
background. “I’m talking about, he broke it bad,” Tee
says. “Like, his elbow pushed up towards his shoulder.”
On the drive to the hospital, Tee tried to calm his son
down. “You gotta be a big man for me. You gotta be a big
boy for me,” he says. Then: “This dude, in all his pain,
found a way to stop crying.”
As a result of the accident, Ja’s left arm is an inch or
two longer than his right. (To this day he drives left
twice as often as he does with his dominant hand. “He
goes left every time because he can reach out farther,”
says Shaq Buchanan, Morant’s college roommate and
guard for the G League’s Memphis Hustle.)
This childhood story is another way to say that Morant
has always been tough, raised with a
“throw some dirt on it” attitude. He
had his knee scoped before the draft,
fractured his thumb in the Orlando
bubble and badly sprained his ankle
in Brooklyn at the end of 2020. None
of those injuries sidelined him as doc-
tors expected them to. But they also
didn’t pose the same threat as what
happened the day after Thanksgiving.
At FedExForum, Morant tried cross-
ing over Hawks guard Kevin Huerter
and thought he heard his knee pop.
Morant limped along the baseline to
Memphis’s bench and was carried to
the locker room. At halftime, the entire
team walked into the training room
to console him. Given his high pain
tolerance and the fact that there was no
contact involved, everyone who could
see the look on his face feared the worst.
“I didn’t want to keep playing that day,”
Jackson says. “I just kind of was over
it. I wasn’t in the mood.”
When MRI results revealed only
a sprained MCL and a three-to-four-
week initial timetable, relief swept
over the organization. In Wells’s view,
Morant’s genes and offseason work-
outs—in which they focused on landing
mechanics, deceleration, reaccelera-
tion and exercises that strengthened
his lower back and feet—helped himBEAR HUGS
Morant’s teammates
understand Ja is the star of
the show, and they’re happy
to fit in alongside him—while
enjoying his gifts.