Latest Ja Morant controversy: “I think the league is probably embarrassed”
USA TODAY Sports’ Jeff Zillgitt tells Mackenzie Salmon why he thinks the latest controversy surrounding Ja Morant is likely an embarrassing situation for Adam Silver and the NBA.
Sports Seriously, USA TODAY
Ja Morant was apparently holding up a gun on Instagram Live – AGAIN!?! – but he might as well have been spitting in the faces of everybody that should matter to him.
The Memphis Grizzlies’ front office that protected the star point guard the first time it happened. The teammates who so loyally defended him the first time it happened. The NBA commissioner who took it easy on him the first time it happened. The corporate giant that still released his first signature shoe after the first time it happened.
Everyone who supported Morant through all the other embarrassing and immature off-court decisions he made over the past year – he made them all look like fools.
OPINION: Forget basketball. Ja Morant’s focus needs to be on his life, not his fame.
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This isn’t a gun problem, or a Second Amendment problem.
This isn’t a media problem.
This isn’t a stress problem.
This specific episode isn’t even a friend problem, even though seemingly every bit of trouble Morant has been in seems to also involve his childhood friend, Davonte Pack. But at least Pack had the common sense to attempt to put the phone down when Morant whipped out his piece this time.
No, this is a judgment problem that should force everybody to reconsider the path Morant is on moving forward.
Maybe he’s just not face-of-the-franchise material. Maybe he’s too consumed with being like his favorite rapper, NBA YoungBoy, instead of being a professional basketball player. Maybe he’ll never be ready to be the leader of this franchise.
If he’s not going to act like one, stop treating him like one. He doesn’t deserve it, and neither do the Grizzlies or their fans.
That doesn’t mean Morant should be traded or discarded. He’s still a fantastic basketball player. But nobody should be promoting or enabling or making excuses for this behavior anymore.
Put Jaren Jackson Jr. or Desmond Bane on the promotional posters. Let the 20-somethings who act like adults speak for the team. Morant was already skipping out on most of the tough postgame sessions with reporters this past season anyway. Make him earn back the cultural status the NBA and Nike tried to bestow upon him, the status he seems intent on recklessly throwing away by acting like a complete idiot.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Sunday this latest gun-toting incident involving Morant could result in “a lengthy suspension” from the NBA to start next season.
Good.
He needs something to put his actions in perspective, and letting down his teammates seems to be the punishment that resonated most with him the first time this happened. The $39 million he just lost in All-NBA voting didn’t appear to have much of an effect.
Darren Rovell, the longtime business reporter, expects “Nike to at least pause its relationship with Ja Morant by (Monday).”
That’d be good, too. He is long overdue for some tough love.
It’s absolutely insane there’s now a second video so similar to the first one that got him in so much trouble. It makes everything he said and did over the past two months seem like nothing more than the public relations crisis management some assumed it was, as opposed to the meaningful change his biggest fans so badly hoped it would cause.
So now this may well threaten the success of another Grizzlies’ season. It may make trading Tyus Jones this offseason impossible because who the heck knows what stupid thing Morant might do next.
He is, sadly, entering a place in NBA lore only Gilbert Arenas recently reached.
Arenas, you’ll recall, was suspended indefinitely by former NBA commissioner David Stern in the aftermath of bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room back in 2010. As Arenas pointed out on his podcast in March, in reaction to Morant’s first gun fiasco inside a Denver area strip club, it wasn’t the guns that got Arenas suspended by the league.
“What I got suspended for was detrimental to the team because when the media was attacking me, like Ja, I was reacting emotionally,” Arenas said. “I got suspended for mental issues. I wasn’t mentally fit, which meant I was suspended indefinitely until furthermore, until we evaluate the situation.”
The Morant that showed up on Instagram Live – AGAIN!?! – isn’t fit right now to lead this franchise.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto.
