SFC13557
NES Member
The 23-year-old NBA superstar was suspended after a March video showed him dancing with a gun in a strip club. Two months later, he finds himself in nearly the same circumstance.
From today's WSJ.This is the consequence of Fatherless Men being brought up in a violent environment. A Multimillionaire can't shake the gang/ghetto culture and has no adults to teach him what a responsible Man should act like. We have fueled this culture with welfare and Section 8 housing and not holding these "citizens" accountable for their action. With that idiot Biden telling Howard U. grads their biggest threat is white supremacists no wonder they believe violence and crime are OK.
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When the Memphis Grizzlies’ superstar point guard Ja Morant stepped away from the team in March after video circulated online of him dancing with a handgun at a strip club, the team didn’t use the word “suspension” in announcing the news.
On Sunday morning, the club took a different tack after another Instagram Live video went viral—this one seeming to show the 23-year-old Morant posing with a gun near his face in the passenger seat of a car. “We are aware of the social media video involving Ja Morant,” a statement from the Grizzlies said. “He is suspended from all team activities pending League review. We have no further comment at this time.”
The video began to circulate Saturday and was since deleted from the account that posted it, belonging to Morant’s friend Davonte Pack, but it has been preserved elsewhere. It bears a striking resemblance to the earlier one, which eventually resulted in an official eight-game suspension handed down by the NBA. Again, Morant could be seen dancing and rapping along to a song; again, what looked like a weapon appeared briefly in his hand.
In the video from Saturday, the camera panned quickly away from Morant after it showed him with the gun.
NBA spokesperson Mike Bass said, “We are aware of the social media post involving Ja Morant and are in the process of gathering information.”
After Morant’s suspension in March, NBA commissioner Adam Silver stressed the importance of one of the league’s youngest star players conducting himself appropriately. “Ja’s conduct was irresponsible, reckless and potentially very dangerous,” Silver said in a statement. “It also has serious consequences given his enormous following and influence, particularly among young fans who look up to him.”
Silver believed, after meeting with Morant, that the player understood his error. “He has expressed sincere contrition and remorse for his behavior,” Silver said. In an interview with ESPN, Morant said he spent time with therapists learning techniques, such as breathing exercises, to manage stress.
Morant’s absence contributed to a tumultuous season for the Grizzlies, who earned the Western Conference’s second playoff seed but lost a first-round series to the seventh-seeded Los Angeles Lakers. It also had a profound effect on Morant’s finances. If he had made an All-NBA team this season, Morant could have boosted his contract’s value by $39 million. After playing just 61 of 82 games, though, he wasn’t voted onto one of the three All-NBA teams.
The two social-media gun incidents are just part of a troublesome stretch for Morant. Last summer, he was accused of punching a 17-year-old during a pickup basketball game, and in a separate incident of intimidating a mall security guard. During the season, members of the Indiana Pacers’ traveling party claimed that someone from a car Morant was riding in trained a laser on their group.
When Morant was away from the team in March, Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins described a process of trying to stay patient with Morant while helping him mature. “We’ve had conversations in the past trying to guide him and help him continue to evolve as a person and a player,” Jenkins said. “Obviously this came to a head the other day, so it put this process into action. The hope was that this would never have happened.”