Ja Morant showed off an imaginary gun; the NBA hit back with a real fine. A day after Morant again used his aiming-a-gun gesture to celebrate making 3-pointers, the Memphis Grizzlies star was fined $75,000 by the league on Friday. It's the second time this week that Morant—who was suspended twice in 2023 for incidents with actual weapons—heard from the league about mimicking the act of using a gun during a game, per the AP. The league called the gesture "inappropriate," adding that "Morant was previously warned by the league office that this gesture could be interpreted in a negative light."
The first interaction with the league office resulted in that warning, after Morant and Golden State's Buddy Hield made the gesture at one another during a Grizzlies-Warriors game on Tuesday. The warning from the league office was evidently ignored, as Morant made similar gestures in Thursday's game. The NBA said it happened twice, though it appeared to have happened after all three of his successful 3-pointers. The third instance wasn't shown on the TNT broadcast of the game.
Morant's two suspensions in 2023 cost him 33 games and about $8.3 million in salary. The first was an eight-game ban for the livestreaming of a video in which he displayed a firearm while in an intoxicated state at a Denver-area nightclub. The other was a 25-game ban after posing with a firearm in a car during another livestreamed video, when the league said Morant "wielded the firearm while knowing that he was being recorded and that the recording was being livestreamed on Instagram Live, despite having made commitments to the NBA and public statements that he would not repeat the conduct for which he was previously disciplined."
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Asked Thursday about the criticism, after he made a game-winning shot at the buzzer to lift Memphis over Miami, Morant said he's "well aware" of what gets said about him. "I'm kind of used to it," Morant noted. "I was pretty much a villain for two years now. Every little thing, if somebody can say something negative about me, it's going to be out there. So, yeah. I don't care no more." (More Ja Morant stories.)
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