After that meeting, Grizzlies assistant coach Blake Ahearn, an avid reader, gave Morant a book called Win in the Dark by Joshua Medcalf and Lucas Jadin. One of several passages caught Morant’s eye: “The dark is where you transform into a version of yourself you never dreamed possible. . . . We quietly and relentlessly train in the dark with complete trust that our moment under the bright lights will come. Welcome to the dark.” Morant ingested the message and made it an offseason ethos, informing his private trainers Trey Draper, Jonathan Thomas and Mo Wells that his regimen wasn’t meant for public consumption. Morant didn’t want anyone to witness his progress, be it on social media or in person. “Welcome to the Dark?” Wells says. “That’s album mode.”