Grizzlies Need Marcus Smart at His Full Powers With Ja Morant Out

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.

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