Just three weeks ago, as Ja Morant’s Grizzlies were battling the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs, retired NBA player Gilbert Arenas was asked yet again to help the rest of us understand the mentality of the Memphis star whose March 6 gun scandal had stained his reputation and threatened his career.
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As expert witnesses go, Arenas’ perspective is as good as it gets on this sort of unsavory topic. In the span of one Dec. 21, 2009 day, the then-28-year-old went from being famous as the wildly-entertaining ‘Hibachi’ scorer to earning infamy for his ill-fated choice to bring guns that weren’t loaded into the Wizards locker room as a response to a beef with a teammate. He was later suspended for the rest of the season by then-commissioner David Stern, pled guilty to a felony weapons possession charge, spent 30 days in a safe house and saw his career spiral downward from there.
The 23-year-old Morant, meanwhile, flashed a gun on Instagram Live while surrounded by others at a Glendale, Colo., strip club and later paid a price that paled in comparison — especially in light of the several other Morant-related incidents in which the presence of a gun had been alleged. Sure, there was the eight-game regular season suspension from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, the short time at a counseling facility in Florida, and — one can fairly argue — the eventual loss of an All-NBA spot that unofficially cost him $39 million on his next contract.
But the Glendale, Colo. authorities determined that there was not enough evidence to pursue charges, as no one was found to be “threatened or menaced with the firearm and in fact the firearm was never located,” according to a statement from the city’s police department. While Morant may have faced a different legal fate in other states, it helped his cause that Colorado is an open-carry state.
As such, Morant could return to his high-flying ways with the runway still clear for him to dominate the next decade. The Grizzlies stood by him, as did Nike and Powerade (for the most part). It was onward and upward from there.
“He’s lucky,” Arenas said of Morant during a podcast visit on the I Am Athlete media network, “because he didn’t have to sit out a whole time — and he’s healthy. … He gets to go in and be (himself again). He gets the love (from the public) right now. He was just two weeks out, and he’s back. I had to sit 50 games. The narrative (in the media) got the run. …”
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All Morant had to do was learn from his mistakes, to realize that NBA stardom demands more discretion and discipline than he had shown in this past year. Tighten up the inner circle. Realize the social responsibility that comes with being a beloved public figure. And perhaps most obvious during this terrifying time of weekly mass shootings and all the unspeakable deaths that come with them, put the guns away for good.
But now that it’s happened again, with Morant making that unfathomable choice on IG Live on Saturday while riding alongside his close friend, Davonte Pack, his luck has almost certainly run out. It’s about accountability now, the kind that has been in such short supply during this saga, from both the league and the Grizzlies.
When it comes to those organizations, the harsh truth is that Morant’s transcendent talent and the seemingly endless marketing possibilities that come with him being their long-term partner were so great that they seemed to have clouded the judgment of all involved. How else to explain the walking-on-egg-shells approach to crisis management that was so obvious at the time?
The Grizzlies, who announced on Sunday that they’ve suspended Morant from all team activities while the league investigates, have created a classic small-market culture where the fear of upsetting the star supersedes all and undermines any chance they might have at being holistically sound. We’ve seen this on the court, where the team’s lack of poise has long since become a hallmark of this once-promising era. We’ve seen it in the way the Grizzlies handle the media, with league-mandated rules being routinely circumvented long before any of these incidents took place and excuses made all along the way in an attempt to cater to their superstar. That’s on all of them, from owner Robert Pera to general manager Zach Kleiman, coach Taylor Jenkins on down.
But perhaps most surprising, from this vantage point, is that this hubris didn’t stop even after the headlines took a turn for the worse. As recently as last month — long after the “it’s free to see how hollows feel” tweet and the accusations about Morant beating up a teenager after a pick-up game at his house, threatening a shoe salesman at a local mall and taking part in an alleged confrontation with a high school student — a Grizzlies official continued to downplay the severity of the Jan. 29 incident involving the Pacers in ongoing conversations with The Athletic about the Morant situation.
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As The Athletic reported on Feb. 5, some members of the Pacers traveling party alleged that a laser — presumably from a gun — was pointed in their direction following a verbal postgame conflict that lasted nearly 20 minutes. As one person who was present said back then, “We felt we were in grave danger.” The league investigated the matter, but “could not corroborate that any individual threatened others with a weapon,” according to a statement at the time from league spokesman Mike Bass.
Yet regardless of the specifics of how that situation went down, one would think there’s a PR threshold in which the reality of a team’s situation is so concerning that the attack-the-messenger tactic comes to an end. That, quite surprisingly, was most definitely not the case. It’s as if all the mirrors in the FedExForum are broken.
Less than a month ago, Nike released a Morant commercial that highlighted his tireless work ethic and love for the game. It is, in essence, a visual representation of him stacking the days and becoming even greater at this basketball craft – without a controversy to be found in the 96-second clip.
He punches the clock, literally, then heads to the gym and goes through his routine while a song that was released in 1951, “Good Morning, Mr. Echo,” plays in the background. Little did we know about the social media reverb that would follow.
But with Morant’s latest ill-advised decision, this has become more of a broken record situation than it is a hit factory. And at long last, it’s time for him to be taken off the turntable for a while.
(Photo: Justin Ford / Getty Images)