Grizzlies couldn’t ignore Morant’s behavior any more
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – What in the world was Ja Morant thinking?
That had to be everyone’s first thought when they woke up March 4 and saw the video making the rounds on social media.
Maybe Morant thought it would be funny to film himself on Instagram Live apparently holding a gun shirtless in a nightclub during the wee hours of that morning. Maybe he thought it would be ironic in light of all the negative headlines generated recently by several offcourt incidents involving him.
He’d show all those people who’ve been picking on him, right?
He sure did.
Morant showed them he’s acting like a petulant child right now. A petulant child so divorced from the real world that he had no idea how brazen his behavior has become. A petulant child who’s risking everything in order to prove he’s something that he’s not.
So Morant ultimately left the Memphis Grizzlies with no choice, no matter how hard they tried to publicly ignore all of his other immature indiscretions in recent months. They couldn’t look the other way anymore.
They suspended Morant for at least two games, presumably sending him home before he could do more damage during the team’s two-game swing through Los Angeles.
“Ja Morant will be away from the team for at least the next two games,” the team wrote in a news release, as if their star player needed a vacation instead of a reality check.
Police in Glendale, Colorado, are investigating the incident. Memphis lost its first game without Morant.
“I take full responsibility for my actions last night. I’m sorry to my family, teammates, coaches, fans, partners, the city of Memphis and the entire Grizzlies organization for letting you down,” Morant said in a statement.
“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.”
That’s a start. So was Morant’s decision to deactivate his Twitter and Instagram accounts.
The wording in all this is an admission of how delicate the whole process will be, and how poor Morant’s choices have been of late.
He is a basketball superstar unlike any Memphis has had before, with a lucrative long-term contract that should keep him here for years to come. But this is also the NBA, where superstars of Morant’s talent level often dictate the terms and can demand a trade at a moment’s notice.
It’s presumably why the Grizzlies have, until now, mostly stayed out of the fray publicly when it was reported that Morant beat up a 17-year-old at a pickup basketball game at his house and allegedly threatened a mall security guard last summer.
It’s why the franchise stood behind him when the Indiana Pacers accused Morant’s associates of threatening them with a laser they thought was from a gun last month at FedExForum.
As recently as March 3, when asked
about this past week’s Washington Post story concerning Morant’s behavior, Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins called it “frustrating when things from the past that have been addressed are brought back out in the public eye. We just put our arms around him, support him, and keep him focused on what he has to do one day at a time.”
This entire era of Grizzlies basketball is largely dependent on Morant. They’re in a tough spot in that regard. So they’ve been treating him with kid gloves. We all did for a while.
But this punishment, and the reaction to what Morant did, only underscores just how ridiculous and juvenile this latest stunt came off. There is no defending this, or explaining it away. There’s no one from Morant’s inner circle to put the blame on. This was all Morant, right down to the Instagram account he used to broadcast himself so flippantly brandishing a gun.
This was someone who couldn’t be told how to act, who was so consumed with the image he’s trying to project that he didn’t realize nobody believes he’s the person he’s trying to be.