SI:AM | Ja Morant’s Dream Return

Plus, previewing the upcoming NFL coaching carousel.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I can’t be the only one who felt old watching the sons of Josh McCown and Chad Pennington go head-to-head in a bowl game last night.

In today’s SI:AM:

🐻 Ja Morant picks up where he left off

🏈 Inside the Seahawks’ QB situation

📝 How to fix signing day

The Grizzlies need to turn it around quickly

Grizzlies star Ja Morant returned from his 25-game suspension last night—and what a return it was.

Morant was suspended in June after he was seen brandishing a gun in an Instagram Live video for a second time. He had previously been suspended eight games in March after a similar incident in which he also flashed a gun on the social platform. Those incidents came after other reports of concerning behavior, including allegations that Morant threatened a security guard at a Memphis mall and repeatedly punched a 17-year-old after a dispute during a pickup basketball game. Morant allegedly went into his house after the dispute with the teenager and returned with a gun in his waistband. He and his associates were also involved in a confrontation with members of the Pacers in which at least one Indiana employee believed someone in a car Morant was riding in pointed a gun at them.

Morant is one of the most electrifying players in the NBA, and his development into an All-Star has helped turn the Grizzlies into a Western Conference contender. But his immaturity off the court jeopardized his career and Memphis’s future. The league hoped the lengthy suspension—one of the longest in NBA history—would send a message to Morant to get his act together.

It remains to be seen whether Morant heard that message, but he returned last night for the Grizzlies’ game against the Pelicans after serving the 25-game ban and was excellent in Memphis’s 115–113 victory.

He had 34 points on 12-of-24 shooting with eight assists and six rebounds. Most notably, he hit the game-winning layup as time expired to snap the Grizzlies’ five-game losing streak.

The game was a reminder of how great Morant can be and how important he is to his team’s success.

“I’ve been putting work in, man,” Morant said in an on-court interview with TNT after the game. “I ain’t play a game in eight months. Had a lot of time to learn myself. A lot of hard days where I went through it. But you know, basketball is my life—what I love, therapeutic for me. And I’m just excited to be back.”

Morant picking up where he left off is a positive sign for the Grizzlies, who mightily struggled in his absence. Starting center Steven Adams went down before the start of the season with a knee injury and will be out all year. Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr. did their best to keep the Grizz afloat while playing increased roles (both are averaging career highs in minutes played). Memphis has used 14 different starting lineups this season in just 26 games.

That instability has led to a lackluster start. After last night’s win, the Grizzlies are 7–19 this season. That’s their second-fewest wins over the first 26 games of a season since the team moved to Memphis in 2001. After making the playoffs in each of the past three seasons, they’ll face an uphill battle to qualify for the postseason. The injuries to Adams and Marcus Smart (who’s been out since mid-November with a sprained ankle) pose major challenges, but the biggest factor is obviously Morant’s extended absence. His reckless behavior left the team without its best player for an extended period, and now they’ll have to really turn things on over the final 56 games to climb out of the cellar. Only one team in the West (the Spurs at 4–22) has a worse record than Memphis.

A team’s competitive window is only so long, and to have a season derailed by a star player’s behavior is frustrating, especially when building a winning roster is set to become more difficult next year when Desmond Bane’s salary jumps from $3.8 million to $35 million. You’d hope that seeing his team struggle without him and harm his chances of winning a championship would send a message to Morant. We’ll see whether it does.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Rodgers essentially shut the door on his potential return.  :: Sam Navarro/USA TODAY Sports

• Albert Breer has the inside scoop on the Seahawks’ uncertainty at quarterback before Drew Lock led Seattle to victory over the Eagles.
• Conor Orr previewed the upcoming NFL coaching carousel and provided a list of names to watch as the process begins.
• Gilberto Manzano broke down some of the biggest coaching decisions from Week 15 in the NFL.
• Matt Verderame took a closer look at three of the most interesting plays from last week’s NFL games.
• Michael Rosenberg argues that a players union would solve all the chaos that now surrounds college football’s national signing day.
• Aaron Rodgers put an end to all the talk of his premature return from a torn Achilles tendon.
• C.J. Stroud is reportedly expected to miss the Texans’ next game as he continues to recover from a concussion.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. Auston Matthews’s quick wrist shot for his NHL-leading 24th goal.

4. AEW wrestler MJF talking Long Island diners with Jimmy Traina on the SI Media Podcast.

3. Stephen Curry’s cold-blooded three to seal the Warriors’ overtime win over the Celtics.

2. The coffee bath for UTSA coach Jeff Traylor in his team’s win over Marshall in the Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl. The celebration was slightly premature and spilled out onto the field during one of the last plays of the game.

1. Trey Bonham’s half-court game-winner for Chattanooga.

SIQ

Which experimental broadcast element did NBC deploy for an entire Jets-Dolphins game on this day in 1980?

• 3-D
• No commentators
• An aerial camera
• Split-screen

Yesterday’s SIQ: The Steelers beat the Colts in a playoff game in Baltimore on Dec. 19, 1976, 40–14. But the most newsworthy event of the afternoon occurred just a few minutes after the game ended. What happened?

• Johnny Unitas announced his retirement
• A plane crashed into the stadium
• The field caught on fire from a heater on the bench
• The entire city of Baltimore lost power

Answer: A plane crashed into the stadium. No one was seriously injured.

The crash occurred about 10 minutes after the game. The single-engine plane entered Baltimore Memorial Stadium through the open end of the horseshoe configuration and crashed into the upper deck on the opposite side when the pilot couldn’t gather the speed necessary to clear the top of the stands.

The Baltimore radio announcers were on a commercial break preparing to continue their postgame coverage when the crash occurred. You can listen to their live reaction immediately after the crash here.

The pilot, Donald Kroner, was unconscious when he was removed from the plane. He was treated at a hospital for head and chest injuries. Three police officers received minor injuries while responding to the crash.

Kroner had flown over the stadium earlier in a different small plane, landed at an airport northeast of the city, rented another plane and flew back to the stadium.

“He came in and watched the ball game for a while,” an employee at the second airport told the Associated Press. “We were all watching the game, and the next thing we knew, there was our plane on the screen.”

Kroner, who had only recently regained his flying license after it was taken away for psychiatric reasons, had apparently flown over the stadium earlier in the week as the Colts were practicing. The reason behind him buzzing the stadium was a dispute with a former Colts player, linebacker Bill Pellington, who had retired more than a decade earlier. Pellington owned a Baltimore restaurant that Kroner had been kicked out of. Kroner previously retaliated by flying a plane over the restaurant and dropping two bottles and a roll of toilet paper from the air.

Kroner was sentenced to two years in jail for the stadium stunt and served three months. After he was released, he wrote a letter to the stadium’s assistant superintendent to apologize—and ask for help getting a season ticket.