Ja Morant should let game do the talking

Ja Morant leaned back against the padded wall, looking past the line of cameras and the two dozen or so reporters crowded around him, and exhaled.

In the midst of explaining himself, of explaining what he was doing the past two weeks and what he's going to change about his life — and what he's not — he couldn't explain this part.

What will it be like Wednesday night, when he's expected to return to the court against the Houston Rockets at Fedexforum, when he's sure to receive an ovation even more powerful than the one he got Monday just for sitting on the bench?

“Yesterday, going out with the team, early on, I kind of felt uncomfortable,” Morant said Tuesday. “I kind of feel the same way now.”

This is what an identity crisis looks and sounds like.

It's a 23-year-old, still sorting through what he did to his life and how he's going to fix it, surrounded by people who came from around the country — from ESPN and The New York Times

and The Athletic — just to hear his first public comments since the image he had been carefully crafting got blown to smithereens.

It's more than nine minutes of prying questions about whether he has an alcohol problem, or a clubbing problem, or a gun problem, or a friends problem, or a social media problem.

It's Morant apologizing to his teammates and his family for a “terrible decision,” emphasizing the counseling he sought over the past couple weeks will be an “ongoing process,” and promising he's going to be more responsible. It's also Morant, a few minutes later,

BRANDON DILL/AP Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant (12) goes up for a dunk over Portland Trail Blazers forward Trendon Watford (2) in the second half of an NBA basketball game on Feb. 1 in Memphis.

CHRIS DAY/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Grizzlies’ Ja Morant holds a basketball that rolled from the court to the bench during the game between the Memphis Grizzlies and the Dallas Mavericks at Fedexforum in Memphis on Monday.