The closest analogues to Morant are Chris Kaman and Draymond Green. But unlike his situation, these incidents were violent, criminal offenses. And in 2014, Raymond Felton was suspended four games after pleading guilty to charges stemming from an incident where he threatened his estranged wife with a gun. In 2010, Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton were suspended for 50 and 38 games, respectively, after pulling guns on each other in the Washington Wizards team facilities. In 2006, Stephen Jackson was suspended just seven games for firing a gun after an altercation at an Indianapolis strip club. Ja Morant isn’t the first NBA player to find himself in trouble for wielding firearms. “This guy is so worried about being cool: ‘Look at me, man: Life is like a rap video.’” The NBA’s gun culture The NBA decided its foray into the marketing of hip-hop with basketball required a paternalist brand of discipline to keep its players’ “street cool” in line and avoid the poisonous image of Black criminality.Īnd like Jackson all those years ago, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, on the network’s Lowe Post basketball podcast, criticized Morant with not so subtle racial undertones. “All the stuff that goes on, it’s like gangster, thuggery stuff.” “The players have been dressing in prison garb the last five or six years,” he said. But Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson exposed the ban’s quiet truth. team, was appalled and embarrassed.”įormer commissioner David Stern went on to institute a controversial dress code for NBA players, banning, among other things, baggy clothing, along with the display of gaudy jewelry. As The Washington Post reported, “Iverson and some of his fellow National Basketball Association professionals arrived wearing an assortment of sweat suits, oversize jeans, shimmering diamond earrings and platinum chains … Larry Brown, the Hall of Fame coach of the U.S. However, in 2004, two events prompted a backlash.įirst, there was the notorious “ Malice at the Palace,” during which players for the Indiana Pacers went into the stands to fight fans who had provoked them at Detroit’s Palace of Auburn Hills stadium.Ī year later, there was an infamous Team USA dinner in Serbia.
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