WITH A SOFT BAN FOR MORANT, NBA DOESN’T CARE ABOUT GUN CONTROL
Adam Silver had talked tough in suggesting a long-term suspension for the troubled young superstar, but pressured by the union and ongoing broadcast talks, the commissioner caved for a second time
So, the next time Ja Morant brandishes a handgun on Instagram Live, will he be suspended for only 42 games? I’m asking because the first time he played show-and-tell with a firearm, he was banned for eight games, and the second time, he got just 25. Thus, I’m figuring NBA commissioner Adam Silver will keep adding 17 games each time Morant wields a gun that could kill people with a pull of the trigger, including himself, accidentally or otherwise.
At this rate, by my calculation, Morant might miss as few as 59 games for actually committing homicide. Life in prison? He’ll be docked 76 games.
What happened to the tough talk, the social-responsibility spiel? Wasn’t that the league boss, as tall as he is bald, who appeared at a Boys and Girls Club in Denver during the Finals and vowed to crush Morant with his Silver Hammer?
“I feel across the board, regardless of what people’s individual views are on gun rights, everyone feels firearms should be handled in a safe way, and waving them around or displaying them in a certain context is not consistent with gun safety and is not the proper message that an NBA player, particularly one at Ja’s level, should be sending to the tens of millions of followers he has,” Silver told kids and parents at the NBA Cares event. “When we have a standard for conduct detrimental, at the end of the day, it’s one based on what we see as the values of this league and what our expectation is for our players in terms of the image we’re portraying to our fans.”
The NBA cares, all right. It cares about protecting its brand, and because the 23-year-old sensation still could be an enormous part of the league’s marketing future, Silver’s words intentionally were much stronger than yet another tame ruling. If you haven’t heard, he has begun intense negotiations for broadcast rights deals that, in his mind, should exceed a collective $70 billion over the long term. What he did, then, was try to play both sides in this defining disciplinary moment and hope no one noticed. We noticed. He’d told the world he was mortified by Morant’s second offense, which directly mocked the original suspension, yet Silver spoke from the other side of his mouth in a convenient Friday news dump with a 25-game suspension that barely will impact the Memphis Grizzlies’ season and have Ja back in plenty of time for …
A national TV date on Christmas Day!
Heretofore, Ja Rule was the name of an American rapper. Now, it defines the hold Morant has on a league that had a chance to make a powerful statement about gun control — and failed badly. To recap, Morant flashed a gun from a Colorado strip club in a wee-hours video post in March. After sitting only eight games and returning for the postseason, which is all that matters in the NBA, he defied Silver last month by holding a gun in his hand while singing and dancing in an SUV with several people, a videographed scene that also went viral. In a press conference before Game 1 of the Finals, Silver appeared ready to pounce like a too-lenient father who’d been fooled and wouldn’t be fooled again. “I don’t think we know yet what it will take to change his behavior,” he said that night.
The latest labor compromise, with the National Basketball Players Association, is anything but a robust deterrent to Morant’s thug life. The latest suspension is 25 games fewer than what Gilbert Arenas received in 2010 for bringing guns into the locker room of the Washington Wizards, which suggests the league arrogantly values its own personnel more than “run-of-the-mill” folks who might be hit by Morant’s ammunition crossfire on the streets. Silver’s more punitive predecessor, David Stern, wouldn’t have been so amenable to helping Morant with a milder repeat sentence. Silver is more concerned about appeasing the players, who run the league, in the name of billions. His spin is to play the role of healer, forgetting what he said recently about “gun safety” and “the image we’re portraying to our fans.”
In his latest statement, Silver continued to deal in double-talk, condemning Morant for his “alarming and disconcerting” actions but also excusing him as a young man who needs to mature. How many chances does he receive without the long leash becoming a farce? If he were the 12th man on the Oklahoma City Thunder, wouldn’t he have been expelled by now? Silver is naked in trying to play a guardian role. What happens if Morant continues to operate in his gang world and fires a bullet next time? A suspension into early December just gives him the summer and fall to go trolling in the streets. “For Ja, basketball needs to take a back seat at this time,” said Silver, emphasizing that Morant must “fulfill a program with the league that directly addresses the circumstances that led him to repeat this destructive behavior.”
Destructive behavior? Twenty-five games? Doesn’t jibe.
Clearly, the commissioner buckled to union pressure, which became more evident when NBPA chief Tamika Tremaglio said the suspension is “excessive and inappropriate for a number of reasons.” What would those reasons be, Tamika? “Ja has expressed remorse and accepted responsibility for his actions, and we support him unequivocally as he does whatever is necessary to represent himself, our players and our league in the best possible light,” she said. “We will explore with Ja all options and next steps.”
How about exploring if he can stop holding a gun in his hand and posting it on social media? How about counting the number of chances this kid has had when most people in the world, guilty of similar gun flashes, would be fired from jobs regardless of laws in their states? “I know my teammates are going to hold it down and I’m so sorry I won’t be out there with you at the beginning of the season,” Morant said in his latest statement, in which he apologized to the league, the Grizzlies and his fans and sponsors. “I hope you’ll give me a chance to prove to you over time I’m a better man than what I’ve been showing you,” he said, becoming the latest athlete to play the “mental health” card when society at-large isn’t allowed such an escape hatch in troubled personal moments.
Ja Morant isn’t struggling with mental health. He’s divided between life as a sports superstar, with a $194.3 million contract and endorsement partners to satisfy, and a punk who wants to party with his boys without accountability. If he’d flashed a gun only once, a corporate break would be more understandable. Twice? This is an outrageous favor, a blind courtesy to a player who doesn’t deserve it.
We should have known the commissioner wasn’t serious about a suspension that would cripple Morant — at least one full season, if not longer — when he appeared on Dan Patrick’s show last week and cracked wise. Patrick, more an entertainer than a journalist, said his friend, actor Adam Sandler, should make a public service announcement for anti-carrying — referring to missed traveling calls in NBA games.
“It could have a double meaning, by the way,” said Silver, out of nowhere.
“The Ja Morant anti-carrying? Absolutely,” Patrick shot back. “I’ve got it, commissioner.”
I’ve got it, too. The commissioner is a puppet for the league’s superstars. Hope no one is shot to death in the process.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.