Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

Veteran forward Markieff Morris suffered a neck injury early on in the 2021-22 season back when he was playing for the Miami Heat. Morris went down with the injury after Denver Nuggets star big man Nikola Jokic hit him with a hard shove from behind and sent him to the ground in a bout between the Heat and Nuggets.

But Morris, who didn’t play in 58 straight games after suffering the injury, alleges that his neck injury wasn’t all that serious and that he was cleared to play after two weeks. The 35-year-old said that the Heat “f—–” him and wrote him off by keeping him glued to the bench following his injury.

“They f—– me over there because they made me work so hard to get back when they knowing it was a whole misconception of how the injury really went, right?” Morris said. “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.

“I was back — it was whiplash. I literally got whiplashed and was right back. O.G. (Udonis Haslem) was there. I was practicing and s— on the regular. I practiced for six f—— months and was working out. … So that was a misconception of I couldn’t play because Miami wasn’t — they didn’t really want me to get back on the court.

“They were just basically like — they wrote me off like, ‘No, you can’t — we not allowing you back on the court with this injury.’ And obviously I played four more years after that, and I’m still playing now.”

Morris appeared in merely 17 of Miami’s 82 games played in the 2021-22 regular season. He averaged 7.6 points while shooting 47.4 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from 3-point range to go along with 2.6 rebounds and 1.4 assists per game.

Then, during the Heat’s deep run in the 2022 NBA Playoffs that ended in the Eastern Conference Finals at the hands of the Boston Celtics, he appeared in just one contest.

Since his stint with the Heat ended, he’s played for three teams — the Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers — but didn’t have a huge role with any of those squads. After all, he hasn’t suited up in more than 35 games in any single season following his cup of coffee in Miami.

He was largely confined to the bench with the Lakers and Mavericks in the 2024-25 campaign. He appeared in only 15 contests and averaged just 11 minutes per game.

With the start of the coming season not all that far off, Morris is still looking for his new NBA home, as he’s a free agent on the open market. Even if there’s reason to be skeptical that he can be a real contributor on the court at the highest level at this stage in his career, he would maybe be a worthwhile locker room addition to a championship contender.

Hopefully, the 2024-25 campaign won’t go down as Morris’ last in the best basketball league on the planet and he will be on a roster before the beginning of the 2025-26 season.