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The Memphis Grizzlies are reportedly seriously listening to trade offers for former All-Star guard Ja Morant for the first time ahead of the Feb. 5 NBA trade deadline.
The challenge Memphis faces in trade discussions regarding Morant are similar to what Atlanta dealt with in dealing their own former All-Star guard Trae Young. The Hawks ultimately traded Young to Washington for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert earlier this week, with neither side sending out any draft compensation in the deal.
It was a paltry return for a player of Young’s stature, but it was representative of the decrease in how the league values undersized, score-first point guards with defensive deficiencies on large contracts.
That poses a problem for the Grizzlies in exploring trade opportunities for Morant. Memphis reportedly is prioritizing young players and/or draft compensation in a deal, but as we saw with the Young trade, there isn’t a lot of interest in giving up valuable assets for a player of Morant’s archetype right now.
Given we have a very recent example of a similar player (albeit with a differing skill set) getting traded, one can’t help but wonder who has more trade value between Morant and Young.
The Contract Difference
Let’s start with the biggest difference between the two that could work in Memphis’ favor. That is the contract situation, where Morant has two more years and $87 million remaining on his deal after the 2025-26 season (with no options). Young, meanwhile, can hit free agency this summer if he chooses or pick up a $49 million player option for the 2026-27 season. Young will be looking to get paid again soon and had the ability to apply a bit of pressure to a team trading for him given his impending option decision. Any time a player will be seeking a new extension, that often works to the detriment of a player’s overall trade value.
Morant, meanwhile, will be under contract through the 2027-28 season. If a team still believes he can get back to the All-Star level he once showed, that could make him more attractive on the trade market. There are some teams that could view this as a buy low opportunity on an All-Star talent who may just be in need of a fresh start. For teams that don’t typically have the opportunity to easily bring in star caliber players, that might be enough to take a swing and hope Morant can find his form again.
At 26 years old, Morant still can point to the potential to get his career back on track if he can get back healthy. When he was able to play consistently, the Grizzlies were consistently a competitive team that finished in the top half of the West. That’s the pitch for Morant, the hope that if he can tap into the player he was four seasons ago, his Memphis teams always won at a high level.
Morant vs. Young: Stats Comparison
Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of the positives when it comes to comparing Morant to Young if you’re the Grizzlies hoping to extract a better return from another team. Young and Morant are closely comparable statistically over the past four seasons (going back to 2022-23), but Young has played in nearly a full season of games more than the Grizzlies’ star in that span.
Stats since start of 2022-23 season
- Trae Young: 213 games played, 25.1 ppg, 10.8 apg 42.3/34.7/87.4 shooting splits
- Ja Morant: 138 games played, 24.1 ppg, 7.7 apg, 45.5/29.5/79.3 shooting splits
If we were to take it to advanced stats, here’s how they compare:
- Trae Young: 20.1 PER, 17.8 WS, .114 WS/48, 2.0 BPM, 7.6 VORP
- Ja Morant: 20.7 PER, 10.6 WS, .118 WS/48, 3.3 BPM, 5.8 VORP
If you were to take away the 2022-23 season — Morant’s last All-Star campaign — things tilt considerably toward Young in each of those advanced stat categories.
Morant’s availability has been a concern throughout his career — he’s never played in more than 67 games in a season, and that was as a rookie. Since the start of the 2023-24 season, he’s appeared in just 77 games due to a combination of suspensions and injuries.
When he has been on the court, Morant’s productivity and efficiency have steadily declined. This season, as he’s battled more injury issues, he has posted career lows in a number of areas — much like Young had in Atlanta before being effectively salary dumped to Washington.
Morant is averaging 19.0 points and 7.6 assists per game on 40.1/20.8/90.0 shooting splits in his 18 appearances this season. Just as we started to see glimpses of the old Morant, he went back on the injury report with a calf issue.
Any team considering trading for Morant has to consider the possibility his best basketball is behind him. It’s incredibly unfortunate that could be the case, because at his peak, Morant was one of the most entertaining and exciting players in the league. His explosiveness and fearlessness was astonishing to watch, but the latter part of that equation possibly contributed to his decline.
Morant has dealt with numerous leg injuries in his career, and it has sapped some of that burst that made him such a terror to defend. Morant once lived at the rim, but his rim frequency has declined in every season of his career.
This season, he’s dipped to just 22.1% of field goal attempts coming within three feet of the rim — as a rookie, that number was 39.6%. The 2025-26 season is also the first year of his career that more than 50% of his field goal attempts have come from beyond 10 feet from the basket. For a player whose main offensive weakness is his perimeter shooting, that’s a concerning trend.
Some of that could be attributed to roster changes in Memphis. The context of the team around him has changed, most notably with the departure of Desmond Bane, long the Grizzlies most-feared 3-point shooter. Perhaps another team could believe they could create more space for Morant to attack, but there’s no doubt he’s taken a step back in terms of his ability to threaten the rim as constantly as he did as a young phenom.
Ultimately, it’s hard to make a strong argument that Morant is a better player currently than Young, or that he even has more upside for the future.
All of that produces a conundrum for Memphis as they begin listening to offers for Morant. It will be exceedingly difficult to get a high-quality young player or a first round pick back for Morant given what we saw with Young’s market.
The Hawks prioritized getting out of Young’s deal without having to give up any draft compensation and not take on any significant long-term money. If the Grizzlies decide to do the same, it’s certainly possible they could find a similar deal. As the deadline approaches, we’ll find out whether Memphis is truly just testing the waters or if they’ve reached a point where they want to simply get out of the Morant business.
If the latter is true, I’d expect Morant to end up being traded in a similar deal to Young’s, where a large veteran contract (or two) comes back to Memphis along with filler. If it’s the former, Morant’s time as a Grizzly will continue into the summer unless there’s one team out there that has more belief in Morant’s ability to return to a level we haven’t seen in three years than most everyone else.