Marcus Smart Will Determine How Seriously We Should Take the Ja Morant–Less Grizzlies

The former Celtics guard brings a veteran presence and defensive tenacity to a young Memphis team looking to become a true title contender.

Look around the NBA, and there’s any number of highly consequential players who could shift the balance of the league this coming year with their performance and change of scenery.

Future Hall of Famer Chris Paul plays for Golden State now and might even end up coming off the bench for the first time in his career. Bruce Brown took an enormous deal to leave the defending-champion Nuggets for the Pacers. One-time Finals hero Fred VanVleet also took lots of money, leaving a middling situation in Toronto for the Rockets, who want to be taken seriously this season. And none of this even touches on the two potential moves that everyone’s waiting on, involving James Harden and Damian Lillard, who are both hoping to land elsewhere in the coming weeks.

Smart will have to be the Grizzlies’ floor general before Morant returns :: Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports

Yet few newcomers, if any, will have more on their shoulders than Marcus Smart, whose nine-year tenure with the Celtics ended this summer when he got dealt to the Grizzlies as part of the deal in which Boston landed center Kristaps Porziņģis. There will be pressure for Smart to perform, certainly. But there’s also his reputation of being a culture setter and a locker-room whisperer of sorts that would seem to raise the stakes as he begins his Memphis career.

The context, as everyone knows, is that the Grizzlies are a young, contending team with a massive question mark hanging above them. Point guard Ja Morant is set to serve a 25-game suspension after a second video of him with a gun emerged on social media. (There have been a number of other off-court instances involving Morant over the past two years, including one that’s currently being waged in civil court.) The Grizzlies have played well in recent seasons when Morant is forced to miss time. Most notably, they were 20–5 during the 2021–22 regular season in games without their superstar, then followed that up by going 11–10 this past campaign in Morant’s absence. But backup guard Tyus Jones was a constant in those situations, and he was dealt to the Wizards as part of the trade involving Smart and Porziņģis.

Jones is incredibly sure-handed for a backup and was perhaps the best reserve guard in the association. Aside from the 27-year-old’s durability—he has missed just 13 games the past three seasons—he has been a solid defender, an above-average three-point shooter and a perennial league leader in assist-to-turnover ratio. Jones’s ability was just one of many things (the team’s defensive chops without Morant and Steven Adams’s tenacity as a rebounder, for example) that helped Memphis excel, even when it seemed like the club shouldn’t have.

It goes without saying that Smart, the league’s Defensive Player of the Year back in 2022, is a fantastic stopper. That ability gives the Grizzlies added flexibility on that end of the floor, even after losing wing Dillon Brooks, who spoke controversially at times but was a solid defender. Smart can often defend anyone from point guards to power forwards.

The bigger question, though, is how Smart will fare as the lead ballhandler without Morant, given all the talent and spacing the Celtics employed. Smart is undeniably capable of serving as a floor general, but that process looks different with the Bombs Away style of attack Joe Mazzulla’s club used. And on that same wavelength, Smart has struggled with his perimeter shooting for the last few years—in a league where 36% from three is about average, Smart has shot 33.6%, 33.1%, 22% and 34.7% over the past four seasons, respectively—which could be a challenge for a Grizzlies roster that already struggles with spacing. The team has always benefited from second-chance points, but those are more abundant when opponents are preoccupied with Morant’s aggressive drives to the cup, which lead to countless Kobe Assists.

Perhaps most interesting in all this, though, is the fact that Memphis quietly signaled it wanted to bring more veterans into its locker room this season, hoping to add more maturity as the stakes increase for the small-market franchise. (Aside from Morant’s five year, $197 million extension that begins this season, sharpshooter Desmond Bane just signed a five year, $207 million extension that will commence at the start of the 2024–25 campaign.) And while no one should assume Smart or any other player can prevent Morant from self-inflicted missteps, Smart has leadership tendencies any club would benefit from. Between him and Derrick Rose—whose high-flying exploits and Memphis ties invited natural comparisons to Morant—there will be more leadership aside from Adams, who, before Morant’s first suspension, reportedly told his teammates in a players-only meeting they needed to show more discipline while on the road.

There are plenty of things to study this season when it comes to the Grizzlies. First, can the group get and then stay fully healthy? (Brandon Clarke’s Achilles injury figures to take more time to heal.) Will there be sufficient shooting beyond Bane and Luke Kennard? Can Jaren Jackson Jr. handle more of the load at center and give the team an added dimension by playing there? And not to be overlooked: Can Morant steer clear of off-court issues and limit his absence to just those 25 games?

But assuming those things all go to plan for Memphis, the question of how, exactly, Smart fits is massive and could go a long way toward answering whether this group will ever hoist a trophy.