{"id":828051,"date":"2026-09-04T19:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T19:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/828051\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T19:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T19:21:15","slug":"trail-blazers-ja-morant-joining-crowded-backcourt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/828051\/","title":{"rendered":"Trail Blazers&#8217; Ja Morant: Joining crowded backcourt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nba\/players\/2892772\/morant\/fantasy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Morant<\/a> is set to share the playmaking duties with Damian Lillard in Portland&#8217;s starting backcourt after being traded from Memphis.<\/p>\n<p>Chris Haynes of NBA TV reported when the trade went down that the <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/nba\/teams\/POR\/portland-trail-blazers\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trail Blazers<\/a> had a Morant and Lillard backcourt pairing in mind, so it&#8217;ll be interesting to see how the ball-handling responsibilities are divvied up in 2026-27 should they stick to that plan. Morant endured yet another injury-plagued campaign in 2025-26 with the Grizzlies, making just 20 appearances while shooting a career-low 41.0 percent from the floor and 23.5 percent from deep, and he&#8217;s reached the 60-game mark just one time over his past five seasons. With plenty of questions surrounding his fit in his new digs, the dynamic 27-year-old point guard is shaping up as a difficult fantasy player to rank as a high-risk, high-reward gamble in the second half of drafts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morant is set to share the playmaking duties with Damian Lillard in Portland&#8217;s starting backcourt after being traded&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":825837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,2825,294,178,293,177,4070,6,471],"class_list":["post-828051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-memphis-grizzlies","tag-basketball","tag-fantasy-basketball","tag-grizzlies","tag-ja-morant","tag-memphis","tag-memphis-grizzlies","tag-memphisgrizzlies","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117214398627214420","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}