Ja Morant and people close to him to have been accused of threatening and even violent behavior in a string of incidents dating from last summer, according to a report from Molly Hensley-Clancy of the Washington Post.
The head of security at a Memphis mall told police that Morant “threatened” him during an altercation in the parking lot, leaving him alarmed enough that he filed a police report.
Four days later, Morant repeatedly punched a teenage boy in the head during a pickup basketball game at Morant’s house, the boy told police.
When Morant threw the ball hard at the boy’s chest as he attempted to check it in, the boy threw it back just as hard. The ball “slipped through [Morant’s] hands,” the teenager said, and it hit Morant’s chin.
The teenager told police Morant then put his chin on the boy’s shoulder and asked his friend, “Do I do it to him?” The friend responded, “Yeah, do it.”
Morant then punched the boy in his jaw, the boy told police, and without warning, the friend struck him on the other side. “I fell to the ground, trying to cover my face, so I wouldn’t get hit in the face,” the boy told police. “I got, started getting hit, punched in my head, everything else.”
“Ja hit me like 12 to 13 times,” the boy said.
The teenager told detectives from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office that, after the fight, Morant went into his house and re-emerged with a gun visible in the waistband of his pants and his hand on the weapon, according to police interviews obtained by The Post, which have not previously been reported.
In an interview with police, Morant said he acted in self-defense.
In a statement, Morant’s agent, Jim Tanner, characterized the allegations as “unsubstantiated rumors and gossip are being put out by people motivated to tear Ja down and tarnish his reputation for their own financial gain.”
The Grizzlies declined to comment. An NBA spokesperson said the league “takes allegations of inappropriate conduct very seriously.”
Nearly two weeks after the altercation, on Aug. 8, Morant and his family filed a police report about the boy allegedly saying he would “come back and light this place up like fireworks.” In that police report, Morant and several family members told police they believed the boy would return and shoot them, “putting [Ja] Morant and his family in fear.”
