Ja Morant trade? Five landing spots that could work for Grizzlies' irritated All-Star

Less than nine months ago, on Feb. 19, Memphis Grizzlies general manager Zach Kleiman offered a very straightforward of the Ja Morant trade rumors that were swirling at the time. "I can't blame other 'executives' for fantasizing about us trading Ja,' Kleiman told The Daily Memphian. "But it's just that -- fantasy. We are not trading Ja. Continue to underestimate Ja, this team and this city, and we will let our performance on the floor speak for itself. I'm not going to give this nonsense further oxygen and look forward to getting back to basketball."

That's all well and good, but let's take a look at what has happened to Morant and the Grizzlies since Kleiman delivered that quote:

• On Feb. 19, 2025, the Grizzlies were 36-18 and the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference. By March 28, 2025, the Grizzlies had fallen to 44-29 and the No. 5 seed.
• On March 28, the Grizzlies fired head coach Taylor Jenkins in part due to the slide, but also because of reported issues certain key players had with the new offense installed partially by assistant Noah LaRoche, who was also fired. That system deemphasized pick-and-rolls, Morant's most common play type, in favor of a drive-and-kick scheme with frequent off-ball movement. Morant reportedly complained about this change.
• By the time the postseason dust settled, the Grizzlies had fallen to No. 8 in the Western Conference. In their first-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Morant suffered a hip injury in Game 3 that sidelined him for the remainder of the team's playoff run. It was the second time an injury knocked Morant out of a postseason for the Grizzlies. He had played just nine games in the prior regular season, and in total, he had missed around 34% of Memphis' regular-season games since being drafted in 2019.
• In June, the Grizzlies traded star guard Desmond Bane to the Orlando Magic for a package of draft picks. While they are not known to have considered a Morant trade afterward, it was the first definitive step backwards Memphis has taken during Morant's career. Despite sniffing around the Kevin Durant and Jimmy Butler trade markets months earlier, the Grizzlies were suddenly no longer an all-in team with three max contracts eager to make an immediate championship push.
• Following Friday's loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Morant frequently instructed reporters to "go ask the coaching staff." When asked what could have been done differently, other than asking the coaching staff, he responded "according to them, probably don't play me." He has since been suspended one game for conduct detrimental to the team.

Ja Morant is starting to seem like more trouble than he's worth for Grizzlies after latest controversy

Sam Quinn

Kleiman almost certainly meant it when he said he would not trade Morant, but this was a player that already had numerous health and off-court concerns. He has since played a part in driving off one coach and has openly challenged another. The Grizzlies have taken an intentional step backward and are no longer realistic championship contenders in the short term. Morant was eligible for a contract extension this offseason, but the Grizzlies, seeing three expensive years left on his existing deal, did not tack on the two extra years that they could have. In a roundabout way, Kleiman might have been right. The Grizzlies may not trade Morant, but not by choice. They might not be able to get value for him even if they wanted to move him.

The contract, injuries and controversies speak for themselves. So do the playing style concerns that have grown with time. Through six seasons and change, Morant has shot just 31.3% on around 6.4 3-point attempts per 100 possessions. For reference, Russell Westbrook's career mark is 30.6% on 5.4 attempts per 100 possessions. The proportion of Morant's shots to come from within three feet of the rim has declined in literally every season of his career, sometimes by large margins and others by tiny ones, but ultimately from 39.6% as a rookie to just 16% so far this year. After getting as high as around a 41% free-throw rate, he's back down to his rookie figure of 33%. This is not quite the unstoppable driver we expected to dominate the league a few years ago.

This is a player who has struggled to stay healthy, has stagnated developmentally and fills perhaps the NBA's most crowded archetype. Small, defensively deficient point guards aren't exactly in vogue. The Milwaukee Bucks emptied their draft cupboard for Damian Lillard, but so far, they look better having waived Lillard to sign Myles Turner and replaced him with cheaper scorers like Cole Anthony and Ryan Rollins than they did with him. When the Hawks tried to trade Trae Young, they reportedly found a barren market. The best version of Morant laps Mikal Bridges as a player, but we live in a world in which Bridges nets five first-round picks in a trade because he's effectively Morant's opposite: historically durable, bigger, defensively-capable and reliable from deep.

The teams with mountains of first-round picks at their disposal -- the Thunder, the Rockets, the Jazz, the Nets, the Spurs -- aren't going to touch Morant. Why would they? They have the assets to be picky. The true contenders would have a hard time justifying it as well. Morant's shooting means that he basically has to be a primary ball-handler, and the best teams already generally have those. The teams that would look at Morant are the ones that can't be as discerning. Maybe they've spent their picks elsewhere. Maybe they're a traditionally undesirable market. Maybe they've just had a few unlucky years. But if you're trading for Ja Morant, you're doing it because you're willing to take a risk. You're trying to buy low on an All-NBA talent that could potentially recapture his older form in a new environment. If we do reach a point at which Kleiman might reconsider trading Morant, here are five teams that make varying degrees of sense.

1. Sacramento Kings

When the Kings got knocked out of the Play-In Tournament last season, even Domantas Sabonis lobbied publicly for a point guard to replace the since-traded De'Aaron Fox. Their solution was Dennis Schröder and Russell Westbrook. It's not going well. Obviously, the Kings don't need to add to their guard logjam. Any trade here would have to involve several of Sacramento's incumbent ball-handlers. 

The idea for Memphis, in all likelihood, would be to break up the Morant contract into smaller components. DeMar DeRozan has a nearly $25 million cap figure this season, but he's guaranteed only $10 million for next season. Malik Monk has a slightly more reasonable figure. He's younger, shoots 3s, and while he's due annual raises, they're small enough to actually constitute percentage-of-the-cap declines with each passing year. If the Grizzlies could muster some draft capital out of this sort of trade, great. The real comparison would be something like Dallas getting out of the Kristaps Porziņģis business in 2022. Sometimes there's no easy trade for one huge contract, so it's easier to split it into smaller components and work from there.

Would a core of Morant, Sabonis and Zach LaVine lead to meaningful contention? The answer is probably no, though there's a bit more synergy in there than you might think. Sabonis will set screens until the cows come home. He's a good shooter if not always the most eager one, and LaVine is obviously happy to fire away from deep (or shallow, or anywhere). It's a potentially potent offensive group that would be a collective turnstile defensively and remain prohibitively expensive for the next several years.

If the goal is to build a champion, well, this isn't the trade for Sacramento to make. In the likelier event that the Kings mostly just want to be competitive enough to light some beams and maybe make the playoffs? You could talk yourself into this. Everything the Kings have done lately suggests that they're mostly just trying to recapture the excitement of their 2023 trip to the postseason. Morant isn't as complete an offensive player as Fox was, but the concept of pairing Sabonis with a speedy point guard and some shooting has worked wonders in Sacramento before.

2. Miami Heat

The irony of listing the Heat here is that they've thrived offensively this season largely by adopting the offensive principles Morant seemingly disliked last season. The Heat have largely abandoned ball-screens, but lead the NBA in pace by a mile despite not having a single player ranked higher than 45th in the NBA in touches per game. If Morant just wants to spam pick-and-roll, well, the 2025-26 Heat don't seem especially interested in playing that way. Of course, part of the reason the Heat aren't playing that way is because they lack the sort of players they'd need to do it.

The Heat are star-hunters. They also have about as strong a track record of straightening out players who've fallen off course as any team in the NBA. If there's a team out there that's positioned organizationally to get the most out of Ja Morant, it's probably Miami. The Heat also have a lot of the ingredients a team would need to succeed around Morant. Bam Adebayo and Kel'El Ware are not only a strong defensive front court, but they're both shooting and making 3s this season. Having Davion Mitchell in the building gives Miami someone to throw at top opposing perimeter players so Morant can be more easily hidden, and to be frank, it's the Heat. They'll always defend.

The Heat still owe out a first-round pick from the Terry Rozier trade. Unless they're willing to trade Ware, they don't really have a marquee player on a rookie deal to use as the centerpiece in a star trade. Their options in constructing a blockbuster are fairly limited, but there's a construction here that makes some sense. Just as the Grizzlies could have extended Morant this offseason, the Heat had the same option with Tyler Herro. They elected not to extend him, and he hasn't played yet this season due to injury. A deal built around the two of them could give Miami the upside it will otherwise struggle to acquire while giving Memphis a somewhat more reliable point guard coming off of his first All-Star Game.

3. Phoenix Suns

Look, there are a lot of reasons the Devin Booker-Kevin Durant-Bradley Beal trio didn't work. One of the many was redundancy. All three were primarily perimeter shotmakers. The Suns ranked 13th in offense last season despite ranking 29th in points in the paint. The appeal of a Morant-Booker backcourt, at least offensively, is that the two do different things. Morant gets to the rim. Booker makes jumpers. It's a more synergistic partnership. Would it generate many stops? No, but frankly, the Suns aren't in a position to be that picky.

Would Mat Ishbia dive back into the All-Star well after the disaster of his first forays? More pertinently, could he? Sacramento and Miami aren't exactly overflowing with assets, but the Suns literally do not have a single tradable first-round pick. The best they could do would be swap rights in 2032, secondary swap rights (or, in some cases, tertiary or beyond) on other encumbered picks and players. Does Phoenix have players the Grizzlies would want? Conceptually, Jalen Green is interesting. Giving one of the NBA's best player-development staffs a crack at one of the league's best athletes is interesting. It probably isn't enough, even in Morant's current position.

Memphis likely wouldn't be too eager for a Dillon Brooks reunion. The other major piece from the Durant trade—Khaman Maluach—probably doesn't appeal to the Grizzlies much either. They already have a bunch of young big men, including Zach Edey, whom they just drafted in 2024. The Suns probably want him around as their own long-term upside ticket anyway. The parties involved here would have to get creative, but if you're looking for a team that should be willing to take a risk, it's Phoenix.

4. Toronto Raptors

The Raptors are 1-4, they haven't made the playoffs since 2022, and they're set to pay the luxury tax this season unless they cut salary between now and the deadline. That combination of bad and expensive is untenable. The Raptors, perhaps more than any other team in the NBA, need some direction.

They're also about as flexible as a team in any realistic Morant sweepstakes could claim to be. They control all of their own first-round picks. They also have a pretty wide variety of players they could offer Memphis. Need a replacement point guard? Immanuel Quickley is expensive, but still a pretty useful player. Want a scoring wing? How does Brandon Ingram sound? Youth? The Raptors haven't drafted at the absolute top of the last few drafts, but their recent forays into the lottery combined with some smart scouting later on has given their bench some interesting prospects.

The obvious holdup here is that Scottie Barnes, like Morant, isn't a great 3-point shooter. How many viable modern contenders have ever been built around two ball-handlers without a 3-point shot? It's not as though the Raptors are equipped to work around that with a shooting center, because they've locked Jakob Poeltl up through the end of the decade. The Raptors are predictably near the bottom of the NBA in 3-point attempt rate. Morant's driving creates 3s, but they don't have nearly enough shooting to benefit. The Raptors need a talent infusion. Barnes just isn't good enough to be the best player on a team with any real ambitions. But this would require a pretty meaningful overhaul to the rest of their roster to make sense.

5. Minnesota Timberwolves

Oh, you don't think the Timberwolves would make a move this drastic right after reaching the Western Conference finals? Well, they did so a year ago when they traded Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. Tim Connelly is bold, opportunistic, and most of all, creative. While the Timberwolves may have reached the conference finals a year ago, they didn't much once they were there. The Thunder are in a class of their own. Minnesota doesn't have the assets to chase the players Houston can or the market to chase the players that the Lakers can. Anthony Edwards isn't Nikola Jokić. Nobody is Victor Wembanyama. Minnesota is in danger of getting left in the Western Conference dust over the next few years.

This is a somewhat transitional season. Mike Conley's time as a starter has ended. Minnesota traded for Rob Dillingham on draft night in 2024 hoping he'd be the long-term replacement. Terrence Shannon has been a pleasant surprise at the end of the first round as well, and the Timberwolves are obviously loaded in the front court. But as we saw in the Western Conference finals, bringing Julius Randle into Oklahoma City as your No. 2 option just isn't going to cut it. At some point in their future, Minnesota is going to have to take a risk. That might mean trading Randle or Rudy Gobert, getting younger and hoping that the youth develops enough to give the Thunder and Spurs a run for their money in a few years.

Or, it could mean Connelly taking another home run swing on Morant and creating NBA's most athletic back court. Edwards and Jaden McDaniels can cover Morant defensively. Shooting is more of an issue, though having a shooting big like Naz Reid available along with potentially Divincenzo off the bench certainly helps. Constructing the trade would be difficult. The Timberwolves are effectively pick-less. Some combination of the youngsters would be a start, but realistically, just to match salary, one of the older front court players would have to be in the deal. As Memphis has no need for either Randle or Rudy Gobert, this would have to become a three-team deal. There's no guarantee constructing one would be feasible. Gobert is 32 and a shade past his prime, and defensive anchor centers aren't netting the trade packages they once did. Randle's always been a tricky fit on a winner given his inconsistent jumper and defense, but the 2025 playoffs likely helped his cause.

If there's a truly "out of nowhere" team that could try to trade for Morant, Minnesota seems like a candidate. We covered all of the reasons certain teams might be skeptical of pursuing him. It's going to take a certain kind of a general manager to ignore them. Connelly, given his history of stunning blockbusters, is that kind of executive.