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    Grizzlies Guard Ja Morant Moves Toward ‘Redemption’ After Gun Video

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    Back from an eight-game suspension, the Memphis Grizzlies guard said he had more work to do to improve himself. But there was also a hint of defiance in his approach.MEMPHIS — When Ja Morant checked into his first game in almost three weeks on Wednesday, Grizzlies fans at the FedEx Forum wrapped him in the warm embrace of a standing ovation and prolonged roars.In a way, they offered him a protective shield from the harsh glare of the spotlight that has fixed itself on Morant, 23, ever since he blithely flashed a gun during an Instagram live session and was forced to acknowledge that some of his off-court behavior could hurt his bright future. Before Wednesday’s game against Houston, Morant had missed the Grizzlies’ past nine games — eight of them because the N.B.A. suspended him without pay for the gun incident. He was a little nervous about his return.“Seeing how the fans reacted to me being back definitely helped me a lot,” Morant said. “Made me feel good inside and yeah. It was, I don’t know. …”His voice began to trail off.“I can’t put it into words,” Morant said. “I’m kind of numb right now but thankful for everybody.”Behind the scenes, Morant had offered to come off the bench. The Grizzlies had won six of their last seven games with Tyus Jones starting at point guard. “I didn’t want to come back and mess any of that chemistry up,” Morant said.He had started every game in his four-year N.B.A. career, but he scored 17 points off the bench in the Grizzlies’ 130-125 win over the Rockets. He still showed some of the dynamism that has made him one of the most exciting players in the N.B.A.Morant is averaging a career-best 8.1 assists per game this season.Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBut his return has included a mix of contrition and defiance, the kind of uncertainty that can sharpen into a course correction or harden into regression. What is at stake for Morant is not just success this season; he could be one of the faces of the league for years to come. He is only 23 and has the skill and the style of a superstar, a brash confidence on the court and the talent to back it up. And now he has experienced one more element of stardom: a glimpse of how quickly it can all go away.N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver noted Morant’s “enormous following and influence” in the announcement of the suspension, which classified the gun incident as conduct detrimental to the league. The Instagram live video was posted early on March 4, when, the N.B.A. said, Morant had been “in an intoxicated state” at a nightclub in the Denver area. Morant soon left the team and checked into a facility in Florida for counseling. He said he spent the time learning how to better deal with stress and improve himself.But the most important thing Morant said this week was that his work isn’t finished.“I’ve been there for two weeks, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely better,” Morant said. “That’s an ongoing process for me that I’ve still been continuing ever since I’ve been out.”The nightclub incident was just one in a series of concerning off-court situations in which people said they felt threatened by Morant or his associates, going back to last summer, according to reports in The Washington Post and The Athletic.During an interview with ESPN last week, Morant indicated he understood that he had played a role in those situations. But on Tuesday, while speaking with a group of reporters for the first time since his suspension, he responded defiantly when asked how he came to realize he was wrong.“I said I had a role, but I didn’t say anything about doing anything wrong, still,” Morant said. “So all those cases is sealed, so I can’t speak on those cases. When I have my time to, everybody will know the actual truth in every incident that I’ve been in.”Morant had rejoined the Grizzlies on Monday, but because he had not been working out while in Florida, he needed more time to prepare for a return. He addressed the team on Monday, but declined to share details of what he had said. It seemed meaningful to his teammates.“He’s talked to everybody, and the way he’s approaching things is very professional,” said Luke Kennard, who was traded to the Grizzlies six weeks ago. “And he’s keeping it straightforward with everybody. That’s what we want.”Morant is in his fourth season with the Grizzlies, having come to the team as a small but electrifying point guard out of Murray State. He is the leader on a talented young team that has been one of the best in the Western Conference all season even as Memphis has worked through extended injuries to key players.Last season, the Grizzlies had the second best record in the West, and businesses all over downtown Memphis painted images of Morant on their windows for the playoffs. The Grizzlies lost to the eventual champions, Golden State, in the second round, in a series that Morant thought Memphis could have just as easily won.Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Morant seemed hesitant to commit to playing on Wednesday, even though Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins had said he expected him to. Morant said he was “completely sorry” for bringing negative attention to the team and his family. He was defensive at times. He admitted he was uncomfortable standing there. One reporter asked what role alcohol might have played in some of his mistakes, and instead of answering that question, Morant said he “never had an alcohol problem.”On Wednesday morning, Morant smiled and joked with his teammates during the Grizzlies’ shootaround. Blake Ahearn, one of the team’s assistant coaches, looked warily at the baseline where a crowd of reporters had gathered to watch the end of the session.“Lot of people here today,” he said.Memphis had suddenly become the center of the N.B.A. world for reasons it never wanted. And as always, all eyes were on Morant.“He’s been kindhearted, lighthearted, he’s smiling,” guard Desmond Bane said after the shootaround. “I think he’s in a good spot. We had a short conversation and he said it’s the best spot he’s been in mentally since he got drafted.”Tee Morant, right, Ja’s father, wore a hoodie with the word “redemption” on the front to Wednesday’s game against the Rockets. Tee is a regular and vocal supporter at Ja’s games.Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBefore Morant left home Wednesday afternoon, he said, he reflected on his feelings — the excitement and the apprehension — and talked himself through them. He said he meditated before the game.About 45 minutes before the game began, Morant arrived on the court to warm up, and members of his family sat courtside. Some of them wore sweatshirts with Morant’s image printed on them along with the word “redemption.”“That was my family’s idea,” Morant said. “It’s me coming back after some negative things have been said constantly throughout this whole basically, what, year and a half now? How I felt? Kind of like a redemption, obviously.”There again was a little bit of defiance, an implication that the real problem had been what people said about Morant, not what he had been doing. But he followed it with words that sounded more introspective and contrite.“It could have been worse,” Morant said. “I got a second chance. I feel like it’s only going to make it right. Show who Ja is as a person. And that’s my family’s message with the hoodies.”When fans saw Morant arrive, they started cheering. Jaren Jackson Jr., who scored a game-high 37 points for Memphis on Wednesday, tried to remain stone-faced. That didn’t last long.“I was cheesing,” Jackson said. “I couldn’t hold it in, for real.”Jackson began tracking the cheers: how fans in the lower deck cheered as soon as Morant came onto the court. How the people in the upper decks didn’t see him at first, but then cheered when the video board showed him. How they cheered again when Morant entered the game with about three minutes remaining in the first quarter. How they cheered a first-quarter dunk that Morant had woven through two defenders to make.“We just wanted him back,” Jackson said, smiling.The Grizzlies wrote a feel-good story on Wednesday night, but it is one that is still unsettled.It has been a little more than a week since Morant returned from the counseling center in Florida. It was an extraordinary step to take during an N.B.A. season, but, as Morant has noted, too short of a visit to make the kind of change necessary to assure his future. He will have months and years to confirm the sincerity of his commitment.Morant has the support of Grizzlies fans, who cheered him throughout his return to play on Wednesday.Justin Ford/Getty Images More

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      The Best N.B.A. Rebounding Training: Battling 14 Siblings

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      Memphis Grizzlies center Steven Adams is great at snagging his team’s missed shots. His childhood may be the secret to his muscle.MEMPHIS — Steven Adams once thought he was destined for farming life, back when he was just an exceptionally tall boy finding his way around Rotorua, a rural town on New Zealand’s North Island known for its thermal pools.He valued hard work, family and consistency. (As the youngest of at least a dozen siblings, he had no choice but to work with others.) Then one of his youth basketball coaches bought him a pair of size 16 sneakers at a flea market. He wore them everywhere.These days, Adams, 29, has a high-profile and well-paid occupation, as a 6-foot-11 center for the Grizzlies — and as one of the N.B.A.’s most prized teammates. He plays defense. He curses. He rebounds. He curses. He cracks jokes. He curses.“Funniest person I’ve ever met,” said David Roddy, a first-year forward.In the process, Adams has endeared himself to a young team with championship hopes as one of the best teams in the Western Conference. A former sidekick to the likes of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant in Oklahoma City, Adams is now a one-man team-building operation in Memphis, where Ja Morant, one of the league’s most precocious stars, counts himself among the beneficiaries of Adams’s lunch-pail labor.“I feel like a lot of the stuff he does for us goes unnoticed,” Morant said, “and it’s time for people to start watching him.”Adams has been a good complement to Ja Morant, left, one of the N.B.A.’s most dynamic young stars.Jim Dedmon/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWith his sleeve of tattoos, bushy beard and mop of hair that extends to the back of his jersey, Adams would look right at home aboard a large fishing vessel. Instead, he leads the N.B.A. in offensive rebounds by a wide margin — a statistic that teammates and coaches value, since offensive rebounds create extra shots — while applying his self-styled brand of leadership.It was on display during the Grizzlies’ season-opening win over the Knicks. In the middle of a late timeout, Adams stole a towel from the shooting guard John Konchar so that he could hand it to Morant, who apparently had a sweaty brow and — let’s be honest — was likely to play a more important role down the stretch. Konchar, who finished with 12 points, was left to stare at his empty hand.After a recent practice, Konchar recalled the first time he met Adams, who came to the Grizzlies in a trade with the New Orleans Pelicans before the start of last season.“I didn’t really know what to expect,” Konchar said. “I mean, he’s 7-feet tall and looks kind of scary.”Konchar proceeded to rattle through Adams’s many fine attributes: his comedic timing, his taste in music, his size and strength, his uncanny gift for collecting errant shots. As he was wrapping up his interview, Konchar spotted Adams.“Steve-O!” Konchar shouted. “I said so many nice things about you.”Adams glanced over his shoulder just long enough to inform Konchar that he was full of it.Said Roddy: “Honestly, he’s taken all the younger guys under his wing. And I’m just trying to learn from him as much as possible.”So much of Adams’s approach as a basketball player is rooted in his childhood. He had a large family. By Adams’s count, his father, Sid, had 14 children, though some of his siblings think the number is higher. Adams also coped with tragedy and loss. And while he loved to have fun, he also knew when to be serious.“Families are tough to run,” Adams said in an interview. “You have to be open and honest. You can’t be overly kind, either. It can’t be encouragement all the time. No, dude, you need to tell them when they’re messing up. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”He went on: “Usually, honesty is quite ugly, and people don’t like it. But it’s important in the N.B.A. because you need immediate results. We play games every other day, so you need to get at the root of the problem.”Sure enough, the interconnected themes of family, community and, yes, teamwork run throughout Adams’s 2018 autobiography, “My Life, My Fight: Rising Up From New Zealand to the OKC Thunder.” Adams is proud of the book.“Threw some words together, didn’t I?” he said.He writes about playing sports as a boy and about getting pushed around by his older sisters. (One of them, Valerie Adams, is a two-time Olympic champion in the shot put who recently retired after winning the bronze medal at the Tokyo Games in 2021.) He writes about struggling with the loss of his father, who died of cancer when Steven was 13, and finding basketball through the help of local coaches who guided him to camps and provided him with opportunities.He also writes about feeling isolated at Notre Dame Preparatory School in Fitchburg, Mass., where he spent a postgraduate season before enrolling at the University of Pittsburgh. By then, Adams writes, he had gotten used to having a “tight-knit community” around him — friends who were “always willing to help out with anything.” Without that sense of community, Adams suffered.So being a part of one — and even helping to create one — was something he prioritized when he joined the Thunder as the No. 12 pick in the 2013 N.B.A. draft. On a playoff-ready team led by Durant and Westbrook, Adams was happy to do the blue-collar work that came naturally to him: block shots and set screens, rebound and defend.Adams averaged more than 20 rebounds per game over three recent Memphis victories.Dennis Schneidler/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIf he was a good teammate, Adams also irritated opponents. As a first-year player, Adams fouled out of three straight games. Vince Carter and Nate Robinson took swings at him. Later, in a heated game against Golden State during the 2016 Western Conference finals, Draymond Green kicked him in the groin.At the time, Adams wondered why so many players seemed to react so aggressively toward him. He theorized that a lot of them were only children. Here, again, he cites being a part of a big family growing up. As he writes in his book, “The trick was to annoy your siblings as much as you could without being caught by your household ref.” The ref, in that instance, was one of his parents.With the Grizzlies, Adams has been on a tear. Ahead of their game against the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday night, Adams had averaged 11.7 points and 20.3 rebounds in three straight wins — and no, that is not a typo. He had 21 rebounds against the Pelicans on Saturday, which seemed like a big deal until he grabbed 23 against the Sacramento Kings the next day.“There’s no craft or science behind it,” Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins said. “He just puts himself in the right spots, reads his teammates and has a knack for the ball. It’s as simple as that.”Adams described some of the subtle differences between offensive and defensive rebounding. On offense, he said, he felt as though he could be on “the attack,” with greater freedom to pursue the ball. On defense, he has more responsibilities. For example, he may be in the middle of a defensive rotation when a shot goes up and he has to find someone to box out.In either case, he knows he has a job to do, which is to help his team. In many ways, it is all he has ever known. More