Ja Morant drops the hammer for yet another dunk of the year candidate
You know those award races where a movie or a TV show everyone loves constantly has two or three entrants in an actors' category? We've basically reached that point with Ja Morant in the dunk of the year race.
The Memphis Grizzlies star added yet another wild dunk to his ever-increasing highlight reel on Saturday against the Indiana Pacers, dropping the hammer as violently as possible while somehow levitating through the paint.
Just take a gander here:
OH MY GOODNESS JA MORANT 😱
DUNK OF THE YEAR CANDIDATE pic.twitter.com/OQsyR28lKj— NBA (@NBA) January 15, 2023
Obscene stuff.
That dunk was part of a winning effort for the Grizzlies, who beat the Pacers 130-112 to improve their record to 29-13, tied with the Denver Nuggets for the best record in the Western Conference. Morant finished with 23 points on 7-of-17 shooting with 10 assists and 3 rebounds.
Dunks like that have been something of a habit for Morant ever since he entered the league, and for a while before it, but the point guard has really ramped up his output over the last 12 months. There are plenty of amazing dunkers in the NBA — perhaps most notably Zion Williamson, the player picked before Morant in the 2019 NBA draft — but no one in the NBA is currently displaying a combination of athleticism, violence and showmanship quite like Morant:
BODY HIM. pic.twitter.com/n3hVYk5EHG
— Memphis Grizzlies (@memgrizz) March 1, 2022
Kyle Anderson steal.
2-on-1 break.
Ja lefty SLAM.
📺 TNT pic.twitter.com/fGsQJpbGUL— NBA (@NBA) March 4, 2022
JA MORANT, ARE YOU KIDDING ME 😱pic.twitter.com/mHob0dG75a
— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) April 27, 2022
12 PUT THE MAN ON A POSTER AGAIN pic.twitter.com/jJPstpWTCH
— Bally Sports: Grizzlies (@GrizzOnBally) January 12, 2023
Even his misses are some of the most entertaining plays you'll see most nights:
Ja Morant almost had the dunk of the year 😱 pic.twitter.com/9vI9PlorM4
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) December 26, 2022
JA MORANT ALMOST SUBMITTED A LATE ENTRY FOR DUNK OF THE DECADE 😳 pic.twitter.com/rtTw6kt0Rp
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 21, 2019
With Morant still only 23 years old, don't expect him to stop anytime soon. And maybe he'll enter the Slam Dunk Contest at some point too.