The NBA is not out to get Ja Morant, no matter how much he tries to make himself the victim of his own reputation.
We can’t even begin with his game-winner in Miami on Thursday night because he’s seemingly hell-bent on making every step of his comeback hell.
The same day he was warned by the NBA league office about his gun gesture, along with Golden State’s Buddy Hield (who he pointed at), Morant unleashed the same celebration on national TV and was subsequently fined $75,000.
Think about that. The league office — Morant’s boss — conveyed to him that the celebration was unacceptable — and then he repeated it, hours later.
This isn’t about a mere gesture; it’s about wanting a marquee player to recognize what’s in front of him, and to not be self-destructive and undo his own on-court excellence.
Either he’s so impulsive in a competitive setting he can’t control himself, or he wants to thumb his nose at the league as the rebel, or he’s simply clueless. One would hope it’s the first instance instead of the last two, but he hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt from the public yet.
If it’s Ja versus the league, go ahead and see if you can win that battle, if that’s the hill you want to die on.
It’s not the biggest deal in the world, it’s not as if Morant was actually carrying a weapon on the floor, but the mere fact we’re at this place feels unnecessary.
“I’m kind of used to it,” Morant said in Miami. “I’m pretty much a villain for two years now, so yeah, I don’t care no more.”
You wonder if Morant feels it’s himself against the world, but it’s really “Ja vs. Ja” because far more people want him to succeed than fail. But his statement seems to indicate he thinks otherwise.
The NBA is the league that has to deal with calls from some critics about its workforce being “too Black,” and thus concerned with scaring off an eye-rolling customer base, and it has the most player-friendly commissioner in the four major professional sports in Adam Silver.
And this is who Ja Morant wants to go against? Make it make sense.
Or maybe he wants to rail against the pervasive gun culture in the United States, our collective obsession with war and guns. He could put the focus on all the gun-like celebrations happening all around the league, making himself the martyr.
Perhaps he can lead the conversation because he’s so very uniquely qualified. It isn’t about the NBA’s hypocrisy, because it's Morant who has had issues with guns — not the other players celebrating with the gesture.
It’s a different time from when Kevin Garnett talked about “loading up the pump, loading up the uzi …ready for war” in referencing a Game 7 in the 2004 playoffs. He wasn’t fined then and it didn’t cause a huge ripple in the sports landscape.
But seriously, when’s the last time we’ve seen Ja Morant, as a collective NBA viewing public?
The last two All-Star Weekends? The Olympic Games? The playoffs?
No, no, and ...
