Ja Morant’s career up to this point has been a roller coaster. He started off by winning rookie of the year in 2020. Then in 2021, he got his team to the play-in tournament, where they beat the Spurs and the Warriors to face the Jazz in the first round of the playoffs. During this postseason run, Ja showed he can be a future superstar, averaging 30 points and 8 assists. So the next year, there were big expectations surrounding the Grizzlies, and they delivered. They finished the year 56-26, securing the 2nd seed in the West. Ja Morant broke out, averaging 27 points for the year and winning the Most Improved Player award. The following year, the Grizzlies finished 2nd in the West once again, but then got upset by the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.

Then the gun issues arose. On March 4th, 2023, Morant flashed a gun on Instagram Live, and the NBA suspended him for 8 games. After that, he showed another gun on IG Live, getting him suspended for another 25 games to start the 2023-24 season. Since then, Morant has continued to show signs of his immaturity. On April 4th, 2025, the NBA fined Ja Morant $75,000 for making gun celebrations on the court.

He’s also missed a lot of time due to injuries over his career. His high-flying and fast-paced playstyle has not been kind to his body. Over the past 3 seasons before 2026, he’s missed a combined 126 games solely because of injuries.

Not to mention that the Grizzlies also haven’t been very successful in recent years. Since the Grizzlies got eliminated by the Lakers in 2023, they have finished in 13th and then 8th place in the West, and last year, Ja Morant actually played 50 games.

Part of the reason why the Grizzlies haven’t been successful is that Ja Morant hasn’t been a huge fan of his coaches. First, it was Taylor Jenkins, Ja complained about not liking Jenkins’ new offensive system, which got rid of ball screens for Morant. Morant heavily depended on these screens to get downhill and get the offense flowing. Jenkins also had the ball in Morant’s hands less with his new system. Both of these things, Ja didn’t like. Morant is currently playing the least amount of minutes ever in his career, including his rookie year. And you can already see some tension brewing between him and his new head coach, Tuomas Iisalo. After a loss to the Lakers, Ja confronted Iisalo on his coaching philosophy about making constant substitutions and not giving him enough time to find his rhythm. This heated argument caused Morant to once again get suspended for a game.

Now, with all this being said, Morant is still only 26 years old and one of the fastest, most explosive and athletic players in the league. So, who wants a player who could potentially be the second-best or maybe even the best player on a championship team? But also someone who could destroy your team’s chemistry and miss more games than he plays?

A desperate team with no other choice.

Let’s take a look at a couple of teams that could be willing to take a huge risk on Ja Morant.

Los Angeles Clippers

In my last blog post, I went over why the Clippers are pretty much screwed. They sit near the bottom of the West with no way out. They can’t trade their good players because they won’t get enough value in return for them. They’re not able to tank because they don’t control their own draft pick until 2030. They also can’t trade for any superstar because they don’t have the trade ammo to make that kind of trade. Thus, trading for Morant is the perfect fit for them. They can get Morant for cheap because of all the controversy surrounding him. On top of that, the Clippers are old; they don’t have much youth on their team who are able to help them score on the fastbreak. The Clippers are currently 28th in the league in this regard; this is certainly an area where Morant will drastically help them.

In terms of making the trade, any deal will probably have to involve John Collins because of his salary. Derrick Jones Jr. should be able to fill Collins’ role decently as well. Because the Clippers don’t have any great young players, they’ll have to deal some of their draft capital to trade for Morant. I could see them trading an unprotected 2030 first-round pick and a 2032 first-round pick. It’s risky to trade even more draft picks and further mortgage their future, but I don’t see a better solution for the Clippers.

Milwaukee Bucks

How long will Giannis be satisfied with being mediocre? Giannis has been playing at an MVP level for the past 7 seasons, in that time, the Bucks have made the conference finals twice and won the championship once. And this all occurred before 2022. But since 2022, the Bucks have only gotten past the first round once and have been eliminated in the first round for 3 consecutive seasons. Giannis has shown time and time again, his top priority is winning; every time he’s made a threat to leave the Bucks made a move. First, they traded for Jrue Holiday after losing in the bubble, then when the Bucks got eliminated by the 8th seed Heat in the first round they traded for Dame.

Giannis once again showed some impatience this offseason. Is trading for Morant the move that can help them get back in contention? It could be, but there are two problems they might run into if they do trade for Morant. The first being the Bucks defense, the Bucks currently have the 8th worst defensive rating in the league, and trading for Ja isn’t going to make that any better, it’s going to make it worse. The second is the breakout season of Ryan Rollins. Rollins has been amazing this year, and with Kevin Porter Jr. coming back as well, they already have a lot of depth at the point guard position. So they’ll most likely have to trade one of these players for Morant.

In a nutshell, I do believe the Grizzlies should trade Morant. However, the return they get for him will probably be much less than people think because of his off the court issues. But we do know, the team that does trade for him, will definitely be a desperate team because I don’t think any other team would be willing to take on that risk.