Ja Morant: Saving Grace
Photo by All-Pro Reels/flickr
Guns. The topic has always been sensitive in America due to senseless crime and worse. Are they needed or not needed? What laws should the government implement concerning the weapon? There may not be a time in the United States when the topic won’t bring tension surrounding it. And when it comes to Ja Morant and his reoccurring incidents, context is essential. Since we’ve reached a point in the US where mass shootings are at a record-breaking high, and every time you get on social media, there is a gruesome headline about someone being shot and injured or worse, the publicity one gives to firearms must be thought about extensively.
On March 4th, earlier this year, Ja Morant of the Memphis Grizzlies went on Instagram Live during his trip to a strip club in Colorado, waving a gun. At the time, no one knew if it was his, his friends, or why he even did it, but it raised some concern. The discourse surrounding Ja and his lifestyle has rampantly increased over his time in the league — good and bad. So one would think things would cool down with time, but it didn’t. As more time went on, The NBA uncovered more details, such as the possibility of the firearm being on the team plane, and eventually, we heard about the league’s investigation into Ja Morant and his off-the-court dealings.
Mistake or Ignorance?
Fast forward to May 14th, Ja once again found himself in the spotlight for waving a gun on camera and received a suspension. Of course, the media and NBA fans raised several questions: why would he do it after he claimed he would do better? Questions about his and his friends' character came to the forefront, and most importantly, people began to wonder if he was serious about his career or not. While Ja and the Grizzlies haven’t turned their regular season success into major postseason success, it’s evident that Ja has the talent and the potential to get his team over the hump. But the speculation around the franchise player’s priorities isn't too far-fetched. In his exit interview for the 2022-2023 season, Ja confessed he needed to “be better with [his] decision-making” and “off the court issues us as an organization… Just need more discipline.” With quotes like that and actions that still say otherwise, confusion is the only thing fans can feel toward Ja. Why would he put his job in jeopardy again by flashing a gun on live with his friends after saying he needed more discipline?
In the Memphis Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins' exit interview, he highlighted many points describing what Ja is going through. Jenkins stated that his players had “definitely faced [their] fair share of adversity” and “[they’re] far from where [they] need to be from a maturity standpoint.” But most importantly, Jenkins pointed out that everything they went through “is all experience that you can only gain from.” When your franchise player is twenty-three years old, sometimes you have to roll with the punches and take the experience that these situations have given you, and the Grizzlies seem to understand that and trust their guy to get himself together on his own. Whether we want to admit it or not, twenty-three years old is young and an age where someone is susceptible to making too many mistakes. Like everything in life, one’s early twenties is when the average person has room for trial and error.
Although Ja Morant is not an average twenty-something-year-old, nor is this incident trial and error, we tend to forget that the early years of your twenties are difficult; add the spotlight the Memphis star has, and it has to be even more complex. Every decision you make is under the microscope that ESPN analysts pick apart on national television every morning for the entire world to see.
With every topic, we could comb through many outcomes and possibilities, and I could sit through each one and break them down. But we need to have grace for this man and realize that just because he’s a superstar doesn’t mean he doesn’t have terrible lapses in judgment. By age twenty-three, you’re in that weird stage of being grown but still learning so much. Most people can’t even think of the bad decisions they made at twenty-three because they probably all seem so minuscule now, and their mistakes weren’t magnified by the news and social media, so looking back, they don’t seem as big.
Holding Ja Accountable
Of course, people shouldn’t ignore what Ja did and move on. His actions rightfully cause concern and discourse, but we should consider that we don’t know this individual on a personal level when making such risky takes about him and his personal life. Like everything in life, this situation has layers, and there is so much we don't know about him and these situations. Rapper Lil Wayne articulated his thoughts on the matter in a digestible answer, stating simply, "Let's just not say he's not this and he not that because we don't know that." And then he, Stephen Jackson, and Matt Barnes went on to talk about how they wouldn't have survived the internet if they had social media in their 20s.
It is known that scrutiny and hyper-fixation from the media is what comes with being famous, but when does holding someone accountable tread the thin line of slandering someone’s character and writing someone off before they get a chance to redeem themselves? Is Ja getting too many passes for his antics? There’s so many questions to be asked, but there’s one that we should consider and think about first. Why should Ja be forced into being a role model when our lawmakers don’t take the label seriously? Is refusing to acknowledge the problem that guns have on our society and flaunting one-off in a video the same thing? Yes, both are indirectly and directly promoting the usage of firearms. Both send a message to our children, but only one seems to be the center of these past couple of months’ Twitter dialogue.
In no way is Ja right in the choices he continues to make on social media, knowing the repercussions he faced prior and the impressionable minds that idolize him, but sometimes, it’s hard to listen to the scrutiny, especially when there’s a ton of hypocrisy from all sides. Hopefully, Ja takes this gracious second chance from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and leaves his extracurricular activities off social media if that’s how he spends his time. These two incidents have distracted people from his talent and questioned his ability to succeed in the league. And while some of the critiques about Ja run the risk of being labeled as over the top and nothing but clickbait, some of the reactions were within good reason because people see his potential to be one of the faces of the league, which is not that far off with the endorsements he has been getting and him being top 10 in jersey sales.
