{"id":132489,"date":"2025-04-02T16:02:01","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T20:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=132489"},"modified":"2025-04-02T16:02:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T20:02:01","slug":"nba-might-suspend-ja-morant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/02\/nba-might-suspend-ja-morant\/","title":{"rendered":"The NBA Might Suspend Ja Morant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The last game between the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies continues to send waves through the league. The Warriors won <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">the game<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> and moved to fifth place in the Western Conference. The latest reports are that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/moranja01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ja Morant<\/a> might face suspension because of a gesture during the game.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The NBA Might Suspend Ja Morant<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Reports by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/44506770\/sources-nba-probes-finger-gun-gesture-grizzles-ja-morant\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shams Charania<\/a> say that the NBA is <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">looking into Ja Morant using<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> his hands and arms to mimic shooting a gun toward the Warriors bench during the game. The league probe will also <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">look into Warriors wing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hieldbu01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Buddy Hield<\/a> and his<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> gesture ahead of Morant\u2019s finger-gun motion. The league officials will talk to all involved parties and come <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">to<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> a conclusion afterward. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The incident occurred during a timeout in the fourth quarter, with only 20.1 seconds remaining. The Warriors won the game 134-125.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">As Morant was walking toward the Grizzlies bench, he made <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">an<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> imaginary gun with his fingers on both hands, h<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">e then<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> pointed them toward the Warriors bench. The referees issued double technical fouls to Morant and Hield, but the NBA will <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">further look into it<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ja Morant throws gun hands to GSW bench while losing \ud83d\udd25\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sGlPO6V07jQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">History Repeats Itself<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">This would not be the first time Ja Morant has been issued a suspension due to using a firearm. If the NBA suspends the Grizzlies point guard, it will be the third time he <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">will have<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> to miss games. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The first incident occurred in March 2023 during an Instagram live stream while Morant was partying in a Denver nightclub. At the time, the NBA issued an indefinite suspension that ended up being an eight-game suspension. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Then, at the beginning of the 2023-24 season, the league suspended him for the first 25 games after he brandished a firearm during an Instagram livestream on his friend\u2019s account. Given his history, it&#8217;s possible Morant will be suspended and at the bare minimum he&#8217;ll be fined.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Ja Morant\u2019s Suspension Can Hurt the Grizzlies Big Time<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The Grizzlies <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">are tied<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> for the sixth spot in the Western Conference with the Minnesota Timberwolves. They are half a game behind the Warriors for the fifth spot and two and a half games behind the Lakers for the fourth spot. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Just a<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> few weeks ago, Memphis was battling for the second seed with the Houston Rockets. Now, they have fallen off a cliff and fired their<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/28\/tuomas-iisola-grizzlies-next-head-coach\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">\u00a0head coach Taylor Jenkins<\/a>. They are on a four-game losing streak and have lost eight of their last ten games.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The Grizzlies have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/team\/schedule\/_\/name\/mem\/memphis-grizzlies\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">six more games<\/a> to play in the season. First, they go on a road trip in the Eastern Conference, with stops at Miami, Detroit, and Charlotte. The Pistons game is the hardest of those three, but their last three games will decide their seeding. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">They play three games in four days, starting with <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">a back-to-back vs.<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Timberwolves at home and on the road in Denver. Memphis closes out the season with a game against Dallas at home. The game against the Timberwolves might be a deciding factor in whether Memphis will start the postseason from the play-in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"modal-image-setImageMetadata\">\n<p class=\"ng-binding\">Photo credit: \u00a9 Petre Thomas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last game between the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies continues to send waves through the league. The Warriors won the game and moved to fifth place in the Western Conference. The latest reports are that Ja Morant might face suspension because of a gesture during the game. The NBA Might Suspend Ja [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5291,"featured_media":132493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,32,62],"tags":[256,1822,2388],"class_list":["post-132489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-grizzlies","category-nba","tag-buddy-hield","tag-ja-morant","tag-shams-charania"],"modified_by":"Eamon Cassels, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132494,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132489\/revisions\/132494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}