Markieff Morris, left, and Scott Brooks high-five during Tuesday's victory over the Clippers. (Will Newton/Getty Images)
National Basketball Association with an emphasis in covering the Washington Wizards.
It was a surprising private conversation, a pivotal point in the Washington Wizards’ season, and yet as Markieff Morris would later recall his talk with Scott Brooks when he learned that he was getting benched, he made it sound like a passing interaction between player and coach.
“He told me I wasn’t starting,” Morris said after Tuesday win over the Los Angeles Clippers. “It was as simple as that.”
The benching of Morris registers as the most calculated response by Brooks to the team’s frustrating start. In breaking from his own tradition, Brooks promoted Kelly Oubre Jr. and sent Morris to the bench ahead of the team’s Tuesday night matchup. And judging by Brooks’s comments the day after the Wizards played one of their best halves to beat the Clippers, the Morris move worked and won’t change when the Wizards play Friday against the Toronto Raptors.
[NBA roundtable: Venting about these dang Wizards edition]
“I like the way obviously we played, especially in the second half,” Brooks said of Tuesday’s starting lineup before shifting to Morris. “He’s going to get plenty of opportunities. I think he probably played the same amount of minutes that he’s played as a starter. I think he actually took a couple more, two or three more shots . . . than he did as a starter. So, he’s been a team guy but right now I think it’s going to stay the same.”
When Morris arrived in Washington after a midseason trade from the Phoenix Suns in 2016, he played off the bench for six games before joining the starters in March of that season, which ended without a playoff appearance and sparked one major offseason change.
Now Morris, who has been a regular in the starting five since Brooks became head coach, will need to his rediscover his rhythm with the second unit.
“Of course, everyone wants to start, but that’s not the position I’m in,” Morris said. “I’m not the coach, I don’t make the decisions. Just have to go out there and play.”
While the Wizards have their team struggles, Morris’s eighth NBA season has been plagued by inconsistency. Though Morris played like the team’s stretch-four savior in the third game of the season, knocking down a career-best six of 10 three-pointers, he has slowed considerably. Since that Oct. 22 breakthrough in Portland, Morris’s shooting has mirrored the team’s lagging percentage. The Wizards pledged to shoot more threes but while Morris is attempting the most of his career (3.7 per game), he’s only connected on 33.9 percent. As a scorer, Morris is averaging just 9.8 points, his lowest scoring output since his sophomore season in the NBA
[Wizards overcome 24-point deficit to top Clippers, yet clouds still hover]
Over the past 10 games, Morris has made just seven three-pointers total and before he was moved to the bench, his friend and teammate John Wall expressed how he was being pigeonholed to stay on the perimeter when he should getting inside and bruising opponents with his size.
“He’s not just a three-point shooter,” Wall said last week.
And yet, in his first game as a reserve, Morris launched six three-pointers and in the fourth quarter he made the corner shot that lifted the Wizards to a lead after being down by 19 points at halftime.
Morris closed the win with regular starters and logged more minutes (25:20) than he did the previous three games. Keeping in character, Morris was just as stoic about his personal turnaround that night as was retelling the brief story about his benching. However, in Morris’s words as he recounted his slow start, he missed five of his six shots in the first half, a glimpse of his true feelings came to the surface.
“I’ve been through it all,” Morris said. “Missing shots is not the worst thing in the world.”
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