By: Edward Yuan

After recklessly waving around a firearm in a social media video recorded in May, Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant has been suspended from 25 games. It is the second time he has done something like this.

As the US continually tries to subdue gun violence, the problem with guns reached the NBA through one of its best players, Ja Morant of the Memphis Grizzlies, who was suspended on Friday because he was waving a gun around in a social media video.

Morant is 23 and, while he is small, he is a great point guard and has one of the best-selling jerseys in the NBA and about 13 million followers on Twitter and Instagram. But, against a background of occasional gun mishaps, and as he is famous for playing in a city that has struggled with guns, Morant has used his growing influence to do stuff that even he knows is wrong.

For many years, the NBA has tried to be progressive, particularly on the topic of gun violence. Many coaches and celebrities, for example, LeBron James and Stephen Curry, have been known to oppose gun violence. The Golden State Warriors, last year’s NBA Champions, are meeting with officials at the White House for a panel on the issue in January. Surprisingly though, Morant didn’t break any league rules about firearms in his videos and did not bring one to the locker room, knowing that if he did, he would face the same fate as the two other people who did in 2010. His carelessness is threatening to weaken the NBA league’s efforts to enforce safety about guns.

The N.B.A. had suspended Morant from eight games already in the early days of March after he had live-streamed video on Instagram of him laughing while he brandished a firearm in a nightclub near Denver after a game. Morant quickly apologized and said he had a problem with stress and had just checked into a health institution to help him with his stress problems.

Then, on May 13, one of Morant’s many friends streamed a video on social media which showed him riding in a vehicle and waving around a firearm. The Grizzlies suspended him indefinitely, and Nate Silver, the founder of a sports news company called FiveThirtyEight, told the sports news company ESPN he was “shocked.”

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/16/sports/basketball/ja-morant-grizzlies-suspended-nba.html