Ja Morant gun video prompts concern in NBA world

May 2024 · 3 minute read

Another video featuring Ja Morant holding what appears to be a gun has caused concern among those in the basketball world.

The Memphis Grizzlies guard, who already flashed a gun in an Instagram Live at a strip club in March and received an eight-game suspension, will likely see a harsher penalty this time after a new video from the weekend apparently showing Morant holding a gun in a car during a friend’s Instagram Live video.

The Grizzlies have already suspended him from all team activities indefinitely.

Current and former players reacted to the video on social media.

Warning: Graphic language

Ja Morant was filmed appearing to hold a gun in an Instagram Live video, more than two months after the same thing happened in a Denver-area strip club. Twitter/@JamesBurnes8
Ja Morant was suspended from all team activities by the Memphis Grizzlies in the wake of his latest gun incident. Getty Images

ESPN pundit and former longtime NBA center Kendrick Perkins tweeted that Morant won’t stop “until he’s OUT the league. SMH”

JR Smith seemed baffled by the latest video.

“I don’t get it. I just don’t get it,” Smith wrote on Twitter.

Utah Jazz swingman Juan Toscano-Anderson wrote on Twitter, “Ja friends really the police. Why they always recording?”

“If ppl got they phone out recording my privacy and private time-that’s a way to never be invited around me again,” Toscano-Anderson wrote in a follow-up tweet.

Former NBA standout Chandler Parsons commented on an Instagram post, suggesting the league should “suspend [Morant] all of next season,” which would be the young guard’s fifth in the league.

Kendrick Perkins tweeted about Ja Morant following his latest gun incident. NBAE via Getty Images
Chandler Parsons says Ja Morant should be suspended for all of next season. Getty Images

On the same post, UFC middleweight contender Derek Brunson commented, “If ‘can’t get right’ was a person.”

Former Dallas Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant also chimed in on Twitter.

“Ja morant .. why dawg? f–k all of that dumb s–t,” Bryant wrote.

Former NBA star Gilbert Arenas, famous for his own gun incident and suspension in 2010, posted a video less than 24 hours prior to the new Morant incident, pleading for the young star to remain out of trouble.

Ja Morant holding a gun while in a strip club on March 4, 2023. Twitter DJ Akademiks @Akademiks

“The most important summer of this man’s career is this summer,” Arenas said on his show Gil’s Arena. “He better lock himself in the gym, in the house.”

The Grizzlies and Morant, who turns 24 in August, were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round, losing to the conference finals-bound Lakers in six games.

Morant, who said the gun from the March video was not his, went to a counseling program in Florida before he returned to the team in late March.

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