After getting in trouble once more for aiming an imaginary gun to celebrate three-pointers, Ja Morant has switched to a different make-believe violent method to mark a long-distance shot. The team’s leading scorer, who was recently fined $75,000 for imitating pointing a long gun after a basket from outside the arc, acted like he was throwing a grenade and pulling the pin in Memphis’s 141-125 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Thursday. Morant, who was 5 of 13 from three-point range, in some cases even covered his ears after the windmill-like hurl of the invisible explosive.
“That’s my celebration now until somebody else has a problem with it, and I’ll find another one,” Morant said after Thursday’s shootaround.
After Morant twice made what was deemed to be an “inappropriate” imaginary gun-aiming gesture on the court, the league assessed a $75,000 fine on April 4. He was previously warned by the league office that this gesture could be interpreted in a negative light.
Morant made the gestures that led to the fine on April 3 when the Grizzlies beat the Miami Heat 110-108, but the league first noticed them in a game against the Golden State Warriors on April 1 at home. Before Morant did it again against Miami, that resulted in the investigation and the warning. Several questionable incidents involving firearms culminated in the fine. Morant was given a 25-game suspension at the start of the 2023-2014 season after being caught on camera waving a gun in a car. He was suspended for eight games after being discovered in a Denver-area nightclub armed. “I wasn’t surprised,” Morant said of the latest fine, “just for showing people what’s pretty much been evident for the last two years.”
Vince Williams Jr., a teammate, said, “I would have gone to that too,” so he wasn’t particularly surprised by the shift in the celebration. “It’s good for him,” Williams said. He can save money. Sincerely, I’m all for anything that helps him save money. However, on Thursday night, the TNT studio crew expressed their displeasure with the grenade celebration. Kenny Smith noted that Morant “has a history that maybe he shouldn’t be doing that.”
Shaquille O’Neal added, “He knows what he’s doing because y’all are going to keep talking about it.” As for Charles Barkley, he said the happiest person may be former Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins, fired on 28 March because “he ain’t got to deal with this immature stuff”.
