Morant’s impact can be bigger than basketball

Mary Wainwright does not know Ja Morant, but she prays for him, worries about him and wishes she could sit down with the troubled young NBA star to help “set him straight.”

Wainwright, a 64- year- old grandmother, is a community stalwart in Smokey City, a gunfirestrafed neighborhood in north Memphis, Tennessee. It is a short jog from Fedexforum, the arena where Morant has worked magic during his four remarkable NBA seasons starring at point guard for the Grizzlies.

Over that stretch, Morant has risen to the upper reaches of the NBA firmament with little turbulence — until recently.

With his team battling for playoff position, Morant, 23, has been exiled for troubling offcourt behavior that crested two weeks ago with the emergence of a video posted to social media that showed him brandishing what appeared to be a handgun at a Colorado strip club.

When will he return? The Grizzlies said he could be back on the court against the San Antonio Spurs on Friday, though NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, rightfully protective of his league’s image, may have other plans.

Among the clutch of young stars touted as future faces of the league, few, if any, have Morant’s daring on- court vibe — the jigsaw dribbling past stunned defenders; the shimmying, vaulting, dreads- flying dunks. The way he plays and his cocksure, beat- allodds manner have led to a budding popularity in all corners of society.

That is why Morant’s situation is so important to think of in ways that go beyond hot takes about games missed or how his team will now fare in the playoffs. Gun violence touches every part of American society. But it has an outsize impact in Black and brown communities where Morant’s influence runs deepest.

And that is also why I reached out to Wainwright, a Black citizen deeply rooted in her community.

“Now you got young kids out there who are stirring up trouble, and they see him flashing a gun, and that just does more to convince them doing that is cool,” said Wainwright, who goes to church daily, keeps a watchful eye on the goings- on in Smokey City and attends two or three Grizzlies games a year, mainly to cheer Morant.

“We’ve just been through so much in this city,” she said, referring to the way violence continues to poison the streets and to the January killing of Tyre Nichols by a group of Memphis police officers. “Ja and the Grizzlies have been something good to hold onto. But now this ... “

Her voice trailed off.

In case you haven’t been paying close attention, the Colorado contretemps was the latest misstep to tarnish Morant’s reputation over the last several months.

A heated February game between the Grizzlies and the Pacers was marred by verbal confrontations between some of Indiana’s players and Morant’s father and friend. After, an allegation arose that someone in Morant’s vehicle trained a red laser, potentially from a gun, toward the Pacers’ bus.

The Washington Post detailed reports of a run- in with a security guard at a Memphis mall and of a fight with a teenager during a pickup game at Morant’s home. The fight ended, the teen told police, with Morant leaving and coming back with a gun.

Morant denied the accusation and told police that the boy shouted the following threat as he fled: “I’m going to come back and light this place up like fireworks.”

None of this is good, of course — not the message conveyed, normalizing aggression with guns; not the optics for Morant, his team and the NBA.

“I’m going to take some time away to get help and work on learning better methods of dealing with stress and my overall well- being,” Morant said in a written apology last week.

Searching for nuance about Morant, I reached a remarkable Memphis pastor, the Rev. Earle Fisher, of Abyssinian Baptist Church. We spoke of how some have branded Morant in the most unsparing terms possible. In some corners, he is now called a thug — and worse.

“For so many observers, it’s all one- dimensional,” Fisher said. “You are either a thug or an athlete, performing at the highest levels, with no bad days or mistakes.

“Fans celebrate Ja for that brashness on court, that chutzpah, that edge,” he added. “But the idea that somehow this

23- year- old with millions of dollars is supposed to polish that edge in a short span of time and present himself, always, as some distinguished gentleman who never shows signs of his age, how does that make sense?”