As rookie point guards go, Ja Morant is essentially perfect. He does practically everything at a high level. Assuming his first (regular) season is complete, he will finish the 2019-20 campaign with the Memphis Grizzlies as the rookie leader in both total points and assists. He is one of the better rookie defenders in basketball as well, certainly rough around the edges, but competent at an age that rarely allows for it. Even his shooting, his presumed weakness entering the NBA, has been a pleasant surprise. While he'll eventually have to attempt more 3s, he's hovered around average shooting percentages both behind the arc and at the free-throw line. 

And the skills hardly tell the whole story. Morant's greatest gifts are the body and mind that enable them. He is Russell Westbrook's successor both physically and ideologically, an all-universe athlete whose unparalleled nightly energy makes him a nightmare to play against. 

Add all of that up and Morant might not have a tangible weakness, and he plays like it. He is so athletically gifted and so unusually intelligent for a player of his age that he can be forgiven for playing like there's no tomorrow. 

Therein lies Morant's paradoxical flaw. The things that make him so special are exactly the things that risk his future. Morant, in the simplest of terms, tries too hard. 

Effort, in itself, is never a bad thing. It's how he directs it that could potentially become problematic. Morant plays every possession like it's his last, seemingly trying to win entire games on single plays, and as a result, he tries things that ordinary players would never even consider. As often as this leads to highlights, it produces turnovers and momentum-killers. It's a delicate balance to strike. Morant's best chance at maximizing his gifts lie in his ability to situationally tone them down. He tries to do too much, and in the long wrong, it is going to hurt his team and potentially himself. 

It's a problem that so few players encounter that no exact blueprint for fixing it exists. It's worth asking if Morant should even want to. After all, on his current track, he is going to be an MVP candidate in the near future. Fixing something that might not be broken risks diminishing what makes him special in the first place. 

But his current playing style poses such a massive risk for injury that his future is put on the line every time he steps on a court anyway. This season has already produced a number of close calls, including a collision with a cameraman, that could be directly attributed to the aggressive deployment of his athleticism. 

Morant is hardly injury-prone, but missing games is an occupational hazard for point guards that can fly. The six he sat out this season only become a problem if that number turns into 60 down the line, and all that takes is one awkward landing. In the meantime, his occasional lack of body-control does him few favors with the officials. At this stage of his career, Morant hardly seems to know his own strength, which can lead to some fairly egregious offensive fouls. 

His turnovers aren't just physical in nature. His genius-level passing intellect gets him into plenty of trouble as well in that it gives him an almost unhealthy confidence. Morant's worst passes tend to be highlights gone wrong, the result of unbridled ambition older players have learned to temper. 

This manifests most often when he leaves his feet. Morant is so gifted as a passer that he refuses to stop looking for teammates even when common sense dictates that he should. Whereas a normal player almost universally shoots after a jump, Morant scans for passes that he doesn't have time to successfully make. He tries anyway, and the result, predictably, is often a turnover. 

The fact that this occasionally works is a testament to his talent. Morant can do the impossible, so he plays as if he will always be able to pull off the impossible when simpler plays would suffice. Too often, he commits avoidable turnovers by making the unnecessarily flashy play instead of the more attainable basic one. 

It would be tempting to write plays like these off as youthful exuberance, but showmanship doesn't always recede with age. It's all fun and games until Game 7 of the NBA Finals rolls around and this happens. 

Morant's five turnovers per 100 possessions have him ninth in the NBA, but aside from Andre Drummond, he has a lower usage rate than every player ahead of him. As his role scales upward with his development, plays like these could become dangerously frequent. The better he gets, the more ambitious he'll likely become. 

That, in essence, is the path Westbrook's career took. There's hardly anything wrong with that in a macro sense. Westbrook won an MVP and has been to the Finals. But championships are won and lost on micro-weaknesses. Minor flaws are the difference between winning and losing at the highest level. If Stephen Curry can throw a championship away on a behind-the-back pass, anyone can. 

But it's not as if Curry has removed the highlight pass from his tool belt. Even at their peak, Golden State accepted the occasional turnover as the cost of doing business. It's a lesson in moderation. Morant doesn't have to change who he is as a player. He just has to recognize that being that player for 48 minutes every night might not be sustainable. 

Self-reflection is a consequence of greatness, a shared necessity among players of a certain caliber. When a player can do everything, what they choose to do, and not do, is ultimately what defines their career. There is little Morant can't do on a basketball court. The next step will come when he recognizes what he shouldn't do. That will only further weaponize his effort. In the proper hands, a scalpel is just as dangerous as a steak knife.