On Wednesday night, with just over two minutes remaining in the game between the Memphis Grizzlies and the San Antonio Spurs, Ja Morant turned down a screen from Desmond Bane, rolled left, saw Victor Wembanyama turn from the corner the furthest and wrote the highlight of the NBA season. Wemby, both lanky hands reaching skyward, could only watch as Morant stepped back and dunked it straight into his face.
Morant strutted in front of the basket towards the crowd, chest out, knowing that no one on the planet, much less in the arena, could say shit to him, because he had just conquered what was supposed to be invincible. Wembanyama himself raised his arms to the sky, as if to say Even though I got smoked, I made the right play. Both players are right.
The frame placed around this highlight is that it “didn’t count,” which is only true in the technical sense: San Antonio’s Stephon Castle was whistled for shoving Morant a split second before the dunk, the referee pointed to the sideline, and there is no official record of a field goal attempt in the books. However, I would argue that the cinematic value of the dunk not only survives its technical non-existence, but is greatly enhanced by it. Both Morant and Wembanyama agreed to the terms of the engagement. Neither side played their role half-heartedly. Morant tried to dunk Wemby like a meteor from the sky and the Frenchman tried to wipe Morant out of the sky.
What I like about this strength is its purity of spirit. Blake Griffin’s immortal dunk over Timofey Mozgov is a gravity-killing exercise in humiliation, but it’s also a shot that cut a 14-point deficit to 12 (or 11 if you want to count the ensuing free throw , which Griffin achieved) in a match whose outcome was still uncertain. When Morant took the track, he and Wemby knew the stakes in their meeting would be purely psychological, unrelated to the basketball game the Grizzlies had all but won at that point. It is in this agreement that we can see the beauty and value of Morant destroying Wembanyama: in the space of a few microseconds, out of pure competitive instinct, they had both decided that this would be a clash worth fighting for. be fought.
My first memory of Victor Wembanyama in a Spurs jersey was in the first game of the 2023 NBA Summer League, when he tried to defend both sides of a Nick Smith Jr.-Kai Jones pick-and-roll, only to as Jones grabs the lob and whacks him on his head as he staggers like a baby deer. What I took away from this is that Wemby is not afraid to dunk. One non-physical thing that makes Wemby special is his dedication to making the right play, possession after possession, over and over again to Brownian lengths. This can be annoying at times, like when he passively follows this logic for up to 16 three-point attempts in a game, but it also means he won’t shy away from the potential embarrassment of getting dunked. The right play is to rotate and protect the rim, which is what he did.
And Morant, for one, understands the value in basketball, both immediately and long-term, of creating spectacular highlights. The Grizzlies are built around his explosive abilities. It all stems from Morant coming into the lane and playing. The Grizz don’t play like other teams; they growl, fight, and rely on Morant’s irresistible momentum, and beating a fully activated team requires a direct confrontation with that force. It’s a daunting prospect. Your competitive spirit must survive the effects of possible total immersion.
“I dunked on a lot of people, bro,” Morant said after the game. “He’s not getting any passes. If you’re on the rim, I’m going to try you if it’s that situation.” The punchline here is that Morant claimed to be a changed man a month ago after avoiding a potential dunk for a close layup in a December loss to the Dallas Mavericks. “I don’t try to dunk at all,” Morant said at the time. “You all think I’m lying. I’m very serious.”
So what has changed? I would say that Morant saw Wembanyama as a mountain worth climbing. Why climb it? Because he was there.
