It’s been four years since Markieff Morris got pushed by Nikola Jokic, causing a neck injury that sidelined him for some time. The incident happened in the Denver Nuggets vs Miami Heat regular-season game in November 2021.
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Morris committed a blatant foul on Jokic. The 6-foot-11-inch-tall Serbian didn’t let it slide. He got right behind Morris as the Heat star was walking away from the play and shoved him to the ground. Both players were removed from the game, which was won by Denver 113-96. Morris, unfortunately, got the worst end of the stick.
He was sidelined for four months. Morris ended up playing only 17 games that season and went on to don the Brooklyn Nets and Dallas Mavericks jerseys for 35 games in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons. Morris, recovered now, played for the LA Lakers in the 2024-25 season. But he is still not happy with how his injury situation was handled.
Morris appeared on The OGs podcast, where he revealed how the news of his injury was exaggerated in the media.
“He f***** me up for the time being. I never really got the opportunity to play again. Once that ended… They f***** me over there because they made me work so hard … it was like an old misconception of how the injury really went, right?” Morris stated.
“It was a two-week injury. I got cleared in two weeks. But they made it seem, because Miami wouldn’t allow me back on the court, that I was injured for six months. It was whiplash. I literally got whiplashed and was right back,” claimed the forward.
Morris then addressed the “misconception” and explained how he kept himself physically ready during that time. “I practiced for 6 f******* months and was working out. So that was a misconception, I couldn’t play because Miami wasn’t … They just really didn’t want me to get back on the court,” he said.
“They were basically just, they wrote me off, like, ‘No, you can’t, we are not allowing you back on the court with this injury.’ Obviously, I played 4 more years after that, I am still playing now,” the former Heat star added.
Morris’ journey didn’t end in Miami, as he went on to enjoy stints with other teams. He, in particular, fondly recalls his time spent with the Nets alongside Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, claiming that they were cooking.
Even when he was in Dallas, despite not playing as much as he would have liked, Morris asserted that there were no secrets, and he was told everything up front.
Well, it certainly seems to have worked out for him. At 35, Morris has achieved pretty much everything he would have wanted, including an NBA championship ring he won with the Lakers in 2020. So, now, he’s happy to ride the bench as the resident veteran, guiding younger stars into the future.
