Snub or not, Ja Morant's all-NBA miss should be good for the Memphis Grizzlies | Giannotto

If this was a snub, it wasn't actually a close one once the votes were revealed.

Ja Morant did not get voted onto one of the three all-NBA teams this season. Only 24 of the 100 media members had him on their ballot, more than 40 fewer than third-team guard selections De'Aaron Fox and Damian Lillard. Morant's max contract extension, which goes into effect next season, will therefore not be eligible to become a supermax contract. He will lose about $40 million.

There were legitimate reasons for Morant to make it. There were legitimate reasons for others to make it over him. They were detailed in this column from the beginning of April.

There were also enough legitimate reasons to believe Morant was left out simply because of his off-court issues. Morant – or you, for that matter – can plausibly argue that to be a snub. As far as the future of the Memphis Grizzlies is concerned, that's probably for the best.

The organization, of course, wanted Morant to be an all-NBA selection, even if it would have cost them $40 million over five years. But the front office does get a little more wiggle room as it begins to move into the next phase of this era, with Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane all about to go from cheaper rookie deals to lucrative extensions.

Morant's reaction, however, is what's most intriguing about this news.

A slighted Morant has often been the best version of Morant. The recruiting slights powered him through his time at Murray State, all the way to the No. 2 overall pick in the 2019 NBA draft. He used them again to show he could be a star in the NBA from a small college, and sought social media fodder as fuel.

Remember that Lakers’ game his rookie season, when he spent part of his walk-off interview with Grizzlies’ sideline reporter Rob Fischer thanking a random hotel salesman for tweeting he didn’t have the fire in his eyes anymore?

That Morant – the one who thinks he’s being disrespected – is far more powerful than the Morant who went on national television and got baited into that disrespectful “fine in the West” comment. He seemed aware of this dynamic during his exit interview after the season ended, noting the Grizzlies had to get back to being “the hunters” instead of the hunted.

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Morant already assumed this was coming. The possibility of missing out on all-NBA honors and a supermax contract were mentioned in the lawsuit he's embroiled in with Joshua Holloway, the Memphis high school basketball player who sued Morant for punching him during a pick-up basketball game at Morant's house last summer.

But it's also true Morant wasn’t as efficient as last season. His 3-point shooting percentage dropped from 34.4 percent to 30.7 percent. His fourth-quarter numbers were worse than not just the six guards picked ahead of him, but almost every other guard under consideration for all-NBA status.

Maybe this will be the long-awaited impetus to confront his 3-point accuracy in a meaningful, sustainable way. Maybe, to become less predictable in those crunch-time moments, he expands his mid-range game. It was easy to spin this as a short term bummer that could turn into a net gain.

Morant was a burgeoning superstar with a borderline case who happened to get outvoted by six other guards who also had a good case. He had a borderline case not because he was meaningfully worse than last season, but because the competition was substantially better compared to last season.

Luka Doncic has been first team all-NBA four years running now. Steph Curry and Damian Lillard both played enough games to be considered this season, as opposed to the injuries that kept them off last season. De’Aaron Fox and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had career years. Donovan Mitchell had a resurgence in Cleveland.

The tie may have gone to the guy who didn’t hold up a gun in a strip club on Instagram Live and get suspended by the NBA for eight games.

So Morant is once again a special player with something to prove.

He even surfaced on social media Wednesday night, in the wake of missing the cut, to like and retweet random tweets predicting a breakthrough season ahead.

“Back on top soon,” Morant wrote.

Snub or not, he took it as one.

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Ja Morant's all-NBA team miss should be good for the Memphis Grizzlies