Ja Morant and the Grizzlies Maul Toronto

Last night the Memphis Grizzlies rolled into Toronto to face the Raptors and this game went as awry as possible for the home team. This was Ja Morant’s first time playing in Toronto and boy did he make sure to make it a memorable one. Ja Morant had a career high 17 assists last night and a lot of these assists were the result of poor defense from Toronto both in the halfcourt and in transition. The transition defense last night was very poor and this led to Ja being able to throw lobs and outlet passes to leakers in transition. Multiple times Steven Adams ran up the floor unchecked leading to an easy lob on dunk attempt. Jaren Jackson Jr. got in on the fun as well as Ja tossed him a lob from essentially halfcourt. The effort in transition on defense just was not there last night for Toronto but that wasn’t their only issue.

Steven Adams by no stretch of the imagination of a bad NBA player, in fact he is quite good and many teams would love to have him, however, when Steven Adams hits your team up for 14 points and a staggering 17 rebounds, 8 of them being on the offensive end, you have a problem. The sheer size of Adams was overwhelming for Toronto and he seemed to just lightly grab boards possession after possession. Another issue Toronto had was just overall offensive creation on the other end. If it wasn’t Pascal Siakam at the helm the creation just took a whole lot of effort and just looked extremely hard. It doesn’t help that Toronto shot 35.7% from three compared to Memphis’ 44.8%.

There were definitely some positives we can grab from last night, namely the production off the bench we saw from Toronto. Chris Boucher finally got extended minutes and he also gave us the energy we needed on the offensive glass and at the rim to combat what Memphis was doing. Boucher was flying through the air on every shot attempt it felt like and he cleaned up a lot for us too, hopefully he can return to the rotation this season because players like this are needed. Jeff Dowtin Jr. also gave some positive minutes last night and what really stuck out was his defense. He was sliding through screens, really getting into ball handlers and just being impactful overall. Gary Trent Jr. continues to be a wonderful shot maker off the bench and he is really just having a career year. Last night he came into the game and fired off and made three threes when Toronto was drowning and in danger of making the lead larger. Gary has shown a wonderful understanding of spacing and he always seems to know where to camp in order to make the pass to him simpler while simultaneously not clogging up the lane. This bench production was really great and it was part of the more positive things from last night.


Memphis was in the driver’s seat from the opening tip it felt like and despite a few scoring runs that would chop the lead down into near single digits, Toronto was never in position to win this game. It wasn’t expected that Toronto would win this game due to all the injuries but the way they lost this game just leaves a sour taste in your mouth. The defensive execution was really poor and for a team that is revered for their effort on defense you wouldn’t think they would be so lackadaisical in transition. For a team that struggles to create like Toronto they absolutely can not afford to be giving the other team so many extra possessions. Both of these things are fixable of course but at 15-20 every issue seems like the world is falling and time is running out.