In the second game of the Grizzlies' series with the Jazz, the player that everyone paid the most attention to before the game was none other than Donovan Mitchell. After all, the Jazz's number one star has been away from the game for more than a month, and Mitchell has expressed his frustration after the unexpected loss of the first game in the West. Therefore, everyone is looking forward to what kind of shocking performance Mitchell can play in this battle back to the field.
However, Mitchell's limelight in this game was stolen by another player, who is The Grizzlies' Ja Morant. Moreover, even Mitchell, who is an opponent, gave heartfelt praise to the 21-year-old after the game.
"To be honest, I wasn't really surprised to see how he performed," Mitchell said, "he's a fantastic player who will give his all as long as he plays." And tonight's ball, from the moment he jumped the ball, he was full of fire. At his current young age, it must be very different to be able to play such a performance. I have a lot of respect for him and the way he plays on the pitch, and he really never gives up. ”
What kind of performance did Morant "convince" Mitchell? A round in the second quarter of the game may give the answer.
At the time, with the game playing about nine minutes into the second quarter, the Grizzlies trailed the Jazz 32-46 on the court. Faced with the first ferocious outside three-point fire in the West, the Grizzlies once only had the ability to fight back, but did not have the strength to fight back. Morant understood that his teammates and team needed some kind of excitement to reawaken their passion on the pitch. And that's always been what Morant is best at.
So, At the top of the three-point arc, Morant and teammate Kyle Anderson made a match similar to the "two-over-one collision with the wall" in football, shrugging off Ingles who was following him, and dribbling the ball towards the Jazz basket. However, Gobert, the candidate for the best defensive player this season, has been guarding near the three-second zone, and when he saw Morant come in, Gobert took two big steps back to the basket, between Morant and the basket.
Morant is 1.91 meters tall, while Gobert is 2.16 meters tall, and nothing else needs to be said, just by swinging these two height figures here, you can see the huge gap in physical talent between the two. On the basketball court, especially in the attack and defense under the basket, it has always been "one inch long, one inch strong". Therefore, the NBA's small outside liners will delve into and develop various skills to strive to make up for the height disadvantage.
But at this time, Morant left all this behind, and he only had the basket in his eyes. Only to see him jump up high, his body arched backwards, and he had enough strength in his whole body to pick up the ball in his hand and smash it towards the basket. Unfortunately, the NBA game is not a hot-blooded comic after all, and Gobert's long arms are high, like an airtight net, firmly covering Morant and the ball in his hand, intercepting him directly from the air. A compartment that instinctively inspired the Grizzlies became a block that ignited the Jazz's home field.
Such an impactful but also slightly reckless move, Morant is not the first time to do it. In his rookie season, he worked in Cleveland to try to imitate Carter's "jumping dunk" at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but the dunk failed and he fell on his back. But such a small setback has never affected Morant's confidence, and as long as there is a glimmer of possibility, he will still rush to the basket without hesitation.
"I'm not afraid at all," Morant said, "and his job is to protect the basket under the basket, and my job is to score goals from the basket." What is clear is that he finished with a great cap. But as you can see, I continued to kill the basket. ”
As Morant said, the dunk was blocked by Gobert, which did not make him lose confidence, but inspired him more motivation. In the ensuing games, he continued to swim and impact, both reflexive dunks that used no-ball cover to cut under the basket and small throws against Gobert after blocking. The Jazz, who lost the third-best league points per game in the regular season, tried various defensive methods in hopes of suppressing Morant's firepower. But seeing Morant, who saw the moves, dissolved them one by one, and finally fixed his personal score at a staggering 47 points.
Behind such a scoring number is naturally a series of NBA historical records. After this campaign, Morant became the holder of a single-game individual scoring record in the playoffs when he was under the age of 22. Previously, that record belonged to LeBron James, who scored 45 points against the Wizards in Game 5 of the 2006 Eastern Conference Semifinals. Fifteen years later, Morant was "a generation of new people for old people".
That's not the only record Morant has broken, and with 26 points from the first game of the series, Morant has scored 73 points in the first two games of his first playoff trip. Since the 1948-49 season, when the BAA League merged with the NBL League to form the NBA, only the "Elder Behemoth" George McCann scored higher points than Morant in the first two games of his career. Morant was only three points away from surpassing McCann.
The momentum of not accepting defeat, the spirit of repeated defeats, and the outstanding scoring ability, even Gobert, who almost became the background board of Morant's partition, cheered for this young man. "That's the way it is, I'm sometimes blocked, sometimes I'm going to finish the cap," Gobert said, "and I'm definitely not going to stop myself, or I'm going to keep doing what I'm supposed to do." And he's the same, and I hope he doesn't stop either. The next time he rushes to the basket, I'll still be there waiting for him. That's the fighting spirit and competitiveness on the pitch, and I know Ja (Morant) has that spirit, and I have it. ”
However, the Jazz who welcomed back Mitchell were, after all, a more complete and powerful team. Even though Morant played a rare performance in playoff history, the Jazz were even better. Nine of them played, 9 of them contributed, 7 of them scored in double figures and 3 scored 20+. The Jazz shot 19 three-pointers with 48.7 percent three-point shooting, making Morant's milestone night a "mileage sadness."
"We lost," Morant said in a post-match interview, "and obviously we didn't do enough in this game." "But, like many stars debuting on the playoff stage, a game won't hide morant' brilliance. Returning to Memphis with a 1-1 score, amid the cheers of the home fans, who can predict how the 21-year-old will perform?