Ja Morant simply couldn’t assist himself.
Roughly 9 hours after the NBA issued him a warning for utilizing a gun gesture as a celebration in a sport on Tuesday, he appeared to do it once more on Thursday night time within the first quarter of a sport towards the Warmth.
After he hit a 3 to chop the Grizzlies’ deficit to 14-9, Morant appeared to place his palms as much as simulate holding a gun as he ran again to get on protection.
Morant made the same gesture within the third quarter after hitting a 3-pointer on the 10:10 mark of the third quarter, Yahoo Sports activities reported.
Naturally, amid all of this, Morant hit the game-winning shot on Thursday night time to raise the Grizzlies to a 110-108 win.
“I really feel like I’ve been the villain for the final two years now,” Morant stated Thursday after the win. “Not even simply to this crowd.”
He added he was “nicely conscious” gun gestures have made headlines.
The Grizzlies star first made the finger gun gesture within the path of the Warriors bench throughout the Tuesday sport, and it was rapidly observed by Golden State’s gamers.
Morant and Warriors guard Buddy Hield — who later imitated the Memphis star — ended up being given technical fouls for the gesture in that sport.
And, the next day, the NBA investigated the matter.
The NBA finally handed each gamers warnings after the league decided that the celebrations have been “not supposed to be violent in nature, however inappropriate and may chorus.”
Morant, after all, has a historical past with weapons after he acquired a number of suspensions from the NBA over gun-related incidents which have occurred over the previous few years.
Morant was suspended for eight video games in 2023 after flashing a gun in an Instagram Dwell.
Two months later, he did so once more in a separate video that price him 25 video games.
Whereas the gestures have caught folks’s consideration, WMC-TV sports activities anchor Matt Infield pushed again on the controversy on X by posting a compilation of movies the place Morant had made the identical gesture throughout a number of video games.
“Right here’s video of Ja Morant doing this *very same celebration* in 4 completely different video games over the past month. It is a full non-story,” he wrote.
