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Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose.
Here on this show, I sit down with inspiring insightful individuals to learn about their
experiences, habits, and mindset that allows them to live their best life.
I had the opportunity to speak with iconic NBA player for the Phoenix Suns, Chris Paul.
There's two different type of people.
People who are going to feel bad for themselves and just so, and then there's other people who
are going to get to work.
Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
This is The Crossover NBA Podcast.
I'm Chris Manick, Senior Writer with Sports Illustrated, joined by my colleague Chris
Herring, Senior Writer with SI, New York Times bestselling author of Blood in the Garden
of Chris.
We want to jump on here on a Friday afternoon because one of the all-time Friday afternoon
newsdumps, or I guess Friday morning newsdumps, came from the NBA, where the league announced
its punishment for John Morant.
The NBA has suspended John Morant for 25 games beginning, of course, next season.
John Morant subsequently released a statement apologizing, three paragraph statement and
won't read the whole thing, but saying he was going to work it himself as mental health
and continue to train for the day when he's allowed back on the courts.
So let's start with the punishment itself.
I believe I said last week on the show that I thought it would be 30 games.
This was kind of right around where I thought it would be a little bit light, but what
was your take on the NBA's 25 game suspension?
Yeah.
I mean, actually hearing you kind of lay out what you're, what you'd started to hear on
your end started to prompt me to start thinking more about the fact that the league
was going to go lighter than what I think a lot of us were expecting is that we initially
were looking at maybe closer to half the season, maybe even slightly more than that.
And I think it was about the way a lot of us perceived Adam Silver's tone, certainly
right after he was asked about it by Malika Andrews.
And then, you know, it almost became almost like a, you know, we talked about this on
the pockets, actually, a little bit of a tour.
It wasn't so much like a John Morant focused tour.
It was just Adam Silver promoting the finals, really, but obviously he was going to be
asked about this, whether it was Dan Patrick or who you name it.
This was the first thing on everybody's mind.
And I think what you raised on the podcast a couple of days ago was really that the league
wasn't looking to really broach a fight here with the players union quite frankly.
And what's interesting about that is now, even just hours after this announcement was made,
it still seems like the players union is going to try to talk this down a little bit.
But I think most of us are looking at it objectively and saying that we all thought that it might
have been more time than this to begin with.
So it's an interesting position.
You're not ever surprised that the union is going to try to whittle something down further,
particularly because Ja here is at risk of having to miss so many games that he would
be ineligible for the Supermax extension if he were to make all NBA, at least the requirements
that are put in place now for those thresholds.
So that's the big number here, I think, but even if it goes less than that, even if
he misses less time than that, if he gets injured at time or two, he's still kind of
irrelevant in that conversation, which is a big thing.
We've talked about it as if it's this surefire thing that he's missed of his Supermax,
but he would be eligible for it next year as well.
And so that's a big deal to have him miss 25 games even even if it's lighter than what
a lot of us were thinking.
Yeah, I wrote about this a little bit on SI.com on Friday, but to kind of paraphrase what
I wrote, I do think the NBA went light on John Moran.
I do think they cut John Moran a break in this situation.
This is after what everyone would probably describe as cutting John Moran a break back
in March when they gave him an eight game suspension for the first incident with a gun.
Look, Adam Silver is a collaborative person on stuff like this.
I don't think Adam Silver wants to send a message just for the sake of sending a message.
Even though I know that there were executives from other teams that were pushing Adam Silver
to do just that, to make a statement with this type of suspension, a statement that says
any kind of activity involving guns was not going to be tolerated in the NBA.
The kind of statement that quite frankly, David Stern was more willing to make would have
said.
You know, during his time, yeah, he would have he would have done it right or wrong.
He would have done it.
Adam Silver is not really wired that way when he suspended John Moran at the first time
around, you know, during that meeting in New York, he brought, you know, union representatives
into that meeting.
It wasn't a collaborative effort necessarily, but they were, you know, advised about what
was happening, you know, most steps along the way.
He certainly felt like they were involved in, if not the decision making, the process
itself, you know, when Adam Silver spoke before game one of the finals and he said, you
know, we're going to put off announcing this suspension until after the finals are over.
He alluded to the union being on the same page with that, that decision making.
Now, I don't know what to make of the union's protest.
Part of me thinks Chris, it's, it's kind of perfunctory, like, you know,
they have to do it.
You know, you don't want to just seem like your NBA is just a suspension.
You just go along with it.
Like, there's probably some of that to the union's gripes.
But you have to remember, the union cannot appeal the suspension.
John Moran has to appeal the suspension.
And look, John Moran issued a lengthy statement seemingly owning up to his flaws and owning
up to what he did.
That wasn't the statement that, that wasn't the kind of statement that sounded to me.
Like someone that was preparing to appeal.
I mean, you know, it goes along with what I'm saying.
When I say collaborative, the NBA issued its multi-paragraph statement on Friday morning.
That was immediately followed by a statement from John Moran that was obviously prepared.
That was immediately followed by a short statement from the Memphis Grizzly.
So it seemed like this was, yeah, it was the very least in contact.
However you want to phrase it, it just seemed like it wasn't just the NBA saying, here it is, guys.
Here's a suspension.
And I do think it's a fair suspension at worst and a light suspension, or a fair suspension
at best and a light suspension at worst.
I don't think you can look at this and say John Moran is being excessively punished.
I mean, John Moran had an incident where he carried a gun into a Denver nightclub, flashed
on Instagram live, and, you know, the NBA gave him a chance and slapped him on the wrist.
And then less than two months later, he went out and did almost the exact same thing again.
That's, that's flaunting it to your employer.
And it has nothing to do with the legality of what John Moran did.
It has nothing to do with laws in Tennessee or in Colorado that say what he did might have been
within the boundaries of those.
The NBA has broad powers when it comes to conduct detrimental to the league.
And that's where they, they are punishing John Moran under to that umbrella.
And this 25 game suspension, it feels pretty fair to me.
It feels like the kind of thing that if you're on John Moran's side,
maybe you let the union kind of do its thing and put up the public fight for you.
But at the end of the day, this is the kind of suspension I suspect that John Moran
will accept and try to move on from.
Yeah, I don't think anybody can realistically sit with a straight face and say that
John was hosed here.
I mean, I think everybody should have been expecting that his punishment would be at least twice
as bad because, you know, there's eight games, but wasn't it that he'd had eight of those
before and then what, he got three extra or whatever that he sat out after he was eligible
to come back, whatever it was, it was essentially twice the first punishment,
which I think people figured Adam Silver had every right to come down potentially twice
as hard when this was two months after.
It was right after Memphis got knocked out of the playoffs.
It didn't show much contrition.
I raised the point that still bothers me a little bit that it was kind of framed from the
standpoint of it being a mental health issue at a time where frankly, that seemed like
a convenient way to frame it considering that there had been a number of other issues leading
up to the first gun incident.
You know, so I think Adam Silver would have had every right to at least give him twice
as many games.
So for the standpoint of complaining about that, I understand the union has a job to do.
I think it's telling that jaw just kind of between him and the Grizzlies essentially had
their own statements prepared ready to go after this.
Now what I think is really interesting that I think fundamentally matters just as much
from a money standpoint and certainly kind of just a PR standpoint, Nike is also standing
by him, which I think is huge and was something that we were all kind of curious what's going
to happen here.
If he's going to get a half year suspension, more than a half year, 50 games, something
like that, and miss the majority of the season, is Nike comfortable, is power a comfortable
with moving forward?
Do they put him on more of a hiatus?
Do they start looking for someone who can fill his spot the way that he kind of filled
the kairi spot?
And the fact that essentially none of those things are happening, I think jaw is really fortunate
here.
Obviously, it will have an impact on the Grizzlies, but also let's be honest, the Grizzlies
have played well when jaw hasn't been in the lineup.
And so I think everybody, jaw, his people, the Grizzlies, sure, you're going to be upset
about the potential of not even really having a chance to get the Supermax here because
of this and because of everything last year, last season with the video and everything.
But this could have been a lot worse, and I think most of us again, at the beginning
of this, we're expecting this to be a lot worse for him.
Is there a hypocrisy with Nike?
I mean, Nike was pretty quick to cut ties with kairi Irving when kairi had his controversy
involving his own interpretation of that film with antisemitic tropes.
They cut ties them pretty quickly.
Nike is now standard by John Morant, twice on incidents involving guns.
Do you see any hypocrisy there?
I'm going to say a little, but not as much as I think a lot of people would like to draw
a parallel to.
Kairi had every opportunity.
People were kind of begging him to, whether it was religious groups, the anti-defamation
league.
There were so many people essentially begging him to take the tweet down, apologize, the
retweet down, whatever you want to call it, and apologize, and he just wouldn't do it.
And it was only after he was punished, essentially, where the league, a combination of the league
and his team, kind of like now, essentially said, man, you've got to take a punishment
here.
Like, we can't do damage control anymore.
It's beyond that.
So they gave him every opportunity.
And I think really, and this is what I'm saying, and this is why I don't think it's all
that hypocritical, I think after a while the concern with Kairi Irving was certainly about
the decisions he was going to make as far as who he was going to offend, what he was willing
to say, what he was not willing to back down from.
But it was also a question of how many games are we going to be able to rely on you playing
from year to year, whether it's because of COVID and the vaccine and wanting to be the
face of that argument, you know, it's not like Kairi was never injured to begin with
or anything like that with a lot of these seasons.
But just kind of a general nature that he was taking.
If you're not on the floor, whether it's because you're going to offend a whole lot of
people, or if it's because you're going to essentially take a stance on something that
makes it so that you're not able to play and abide by what the league and the city regulations
are asking for, if you're voluntarily going to miss half a season and keep in mind, for
a while, the nets had made the decision to sit him out for both home and road games until
they really needed him at that point.
What is Nike supposed to do at that point?
So that's why I'm saying, why, Jay, I think he's fortunate here.
I don't necessarily think it's hypocrisy, but I think he's fortunate because had the league
come down on him for two thirds of the games or more than half a season, all of a sudden
he's more in that Kyrie Irving boat from the standpoint of, we just don't know when he's
going to be available.
And then what if he messes up again, and then he's gone for a year, a year and a half?
You can't rely on that.
So to me, that's one of the most interesting questions coming up for Jay and for Adam
Silverquite, frankly, is that, fine, you want to take this stance on him 25 games now?
Fine.
If he has another episode like this, I kind of don't know what you do with him.
Like a lot of people, I think I know what they do.
I think I know.
I mean, look, I have not talked to anybody in the league office that has confirmed this,
but I've talked to enough people over the last, you know, three or four hours, you know,
kind of with knowledge of what goes on in there.
And the belief that I'm operating under is that this happens against a season.
I think it has to be, right?
And that's what I'm saying.
It has to be.
If you're going to flaunt, you know, if you're going to flaunt the NBA punishment and
flaunt the NBA rules as much as John Merritt would, if he did it a third time, it would
be a season.
I think that would probably be a deal breaker for Nike as well, I mean, not to make it
the baseball analogy, but three strikes and you're probably out, at least for one season
in the NBA and out of a contract.
And that's my thought is that I think, and maybe, and who knows, maybe fundamentally that
is why the league came down the way.
It's in a part of why they came down the way they did it.
They don't want to completely just pull everything off the table for him for something that
wasn't illegal.
It is a horrible look for the league.
It does not abide by their code or anything like that.
It's a young player.
I think to me, the part where I could have understood the league coming down harder, aside
from it being in such close proximity to the first incident, again, is that he had a
history of kind of questionable close calls, things that might have been illegal in other
cases had it been investigated more closely or had they come down on him harder.
Not the league, but authorities or some of these civil stuff things that are now happening
in the background.
I think the league could have taken more of that into account in terms of suspending
him for a longer period of time here, but because they're not doing that, it really
does feel like the next time the hammer would be dropped at that point, if they back away
from him for a year or even 50, 60 games, it's hard for Nike or anybody else to really
stand by him at that point when you don't get a chance to market him because he's not
going to be on the court.
Not to mention what it does to the Grizzlies, and like you were saying, I think I imagine
that's the next spot we're going here is just how does this impact the team.
But frankly, 25 games, I mean, they've played without him for 25 games.
If they're healthy and they bring back most of this core, and I know that they're going
to move on from Dylan Brooks, it seems like, but if they bring back most of this core,
it's still a pretty good, capable team that should still be in playoff position.
Yeah, I agree.
And the question that is unanswerable right now is, does a suspension like this get through
to John Morant?
Obviously, the eight game suspension didn't get through to him.
And when Adam Silver was speaking earlier this month, he came out and said that he doesn't
know what kind of punishment would resonate with John Morant.
But we'll get through to John Morant.
25 games is a long time.
It's almost $8 million in salary.
It's, as you mentioned, going to cost him, you know, a potential spot, all NBA team.
It's going to affect the Grizzlies season one way or the other.
Yeah, they've been great without John Morant over the last couple of years.
But yeah, I don't know how sustainable that is.
No guarantee.
You take it all star off your team.
Yeah, I mean, you've got arguably the best backup point card in the NBA in Tias Jones.
You know, this is, this is going to be the real test.
Like does John Morant make substantial changes?
I'm not going to sit here and tell him what those changes are.
I don't have any idea.
Like, you know, I see people on TV saying, like, get out of Memphis or dump all your friends.
I don't know, I don't know.
I don't know what his situation is.
And I don't know what's best for him.
But something does need to change, something substantive needs to change.
I mean, the guy, again, less than two months after falling on his sword in New York
at the NBA office, issuing every May a culpa in the book goes out and does the exact same thing
on the exact same platform on Instagram live, you know, flashing a gun.
Like he didn't learn anything from that first experience.
You know, the question's going to be, does he learn something from this?
Are there substantive changes?
You and I both know Chris.
Like he comes back next year, has no incidents, gets into playoffs.
That team makes a run June 16, 2024.
This is not a topic.
This has nothing to do with John Morant.
It's over.
It's gone.
It's done.
It's off his resume, you know, seemingly forever.
Yeah.
But he's going to have to show a level of maturity that he has to date, not yet shown.
Yeah, I mean, this afternoon, I guess this morning I went for a run and I was,
I'm re-listening to one of my favorite basketball books.
It's called Not a Game by Kent Bab who wrote a book on Alan Iverson.
And it's so interesting to kind of read up on Iverson's beginnings
and, and you know, how he always had different off court things he was dealing with.
Even as a kid, there was just so much around him that it was part of his life.
Even if he wasn't the one engaged in it, it was just around him.
And the idea of just how many bad decisions were made around him and how many enablers
there were around him and how it came back to haunt him.
But it also talks in detail about the times where Alan could be on good behavior, honest,
best behavior for a couple months at a time, a season at a time,
or the success comes right behind the bad behavior and how readily people are willing
to kind of forgive and forget a lot of the stuff that happens that is unacceptable.
And so I think you're right, a year, a season of relatively good behavior,
which I keep thinking could be as simple as him and his friends losing their social media.
Because the thing is, we don't know how many of these things John Morant has done regularly.
I mean, there have been suggestions now through some of these allegations
that a lot of this stuff is semi-regular behavior,
has at least become semi-regular behavior.
It's just not recorded.
And I think about that in a lot of frames of reference,
from the standpoint of even when we talk about George Floyd and you name it,
Philando Castile and all these police involved shootings,
these killings of black men that have been happening on camera.
But now when we really think about it,
it's not that those things never happened before.
It's that they're shown on cameras.
You know, Rodney King was on camera in a way that people weren't used to seeing.
John Morant simply loses social media and convinces his friends and the people in a circle
to lose their social media.
A lot of the stuff is never known about.
And while I don't think the league would be thrilled about that,
they don't want this stuff being in the public eye.
I think they'll always have a concern about it, even if he goes a while without having any incidents.
But it's just more, why is it being publicized, why is it being shown?
I'm sure that's the question that Nike has and power it has is that it's just bad for business.
And whether it's legal or not, it's bad for business,
particularly for it to be shown.
And the internet lives forever.
Social media has a field day with this stuff when it happens.
But nobody wants that.
I don't think anybody wants that to continue to be the case.
And I'm surprised that that jaw and his friends don't see a means of just kind of essentially just
dropping this behavior, at least to where it's publicized and shown.
I can't believe he's got a friend that thought it was a good idea to go live when
Jaws got a gun in his hair.
I don't.
It was one of the friends that got kicked out of one of the arenas, too.
I mean, like, you know, banned from the arenas, so that's a whole nother.
Yeah, that's a whole nother follow-up that we are not going to investigate at this time.
All right, we will be back next week, hopefully talking about other topics here on the podcast.
Hey, y'all, it's Amisa and Devon here and we've got some news for you.
Get ready because MTV's official challenge podcast is heading back in time.
For the first time ever, we're diving into an iconic season from the past.
Free agents.
We'll go behind the scenes with legendary cast members from the season,
plus here what they've been up to since it ended.
Just because there's no challenge on TV right now,
doesn't mean we're going to leave our podcast listeners hanging.
Listen to MTV's official challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
In a new series from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio,
this is the Fighty Pucks.
We're going out on the ice with the most violent hockey team ever.
That was guerrilla warfare at the highest.
Were they heroes or villains?
You decide.
I don't know what to say and they don't want to get shot.
Welcome to the jungle.
Listen to the Fighty Pucks on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.