The Memphis Grizzlies entered Thursday night with their most important game of the season on the line against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
What started as a promising first half, ended in an astonishing 52-point third quarter for the Minnesota Timberwolves. The six-point Grizzlies lead quickly turned into a 23-point deficit for them. Memphis ultimately lost a game they couldn’t afford to lose, and now they have less than 24 hours to face off against the Denver Nuggets in an even more important game.
Morant isn’t looking for any sympathy when it comes to dealing with the brutal back-to-back, he just wants his team to play defense.
“We don’t got no choice,” Morant said. “We put ourselves in this position. No complaints from me. I’m ready to go to Denver. Play some f**king defense and go get a win.”
After the loss, the Grizzlies dropped from the sixth seed to the seventh seed. They’re now engaged in a three-way tie between the Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves. Their hopes of staying out of the play-in tournament aren’t dead, but they essentially hinge entirely on the team’s game against the Nuggets on Friday.
Denver is fresh off of a massive coaching change and just snapped a four-game losing streak. The Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets face off at 9:00 p.m. EST on Friday.
Grizzlies’ Morant doing grenade celebration until it’s ‘a problem’
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Ja Morant got in trouble again for aiming an imaginary gun to celebrate 3-pointers, so he has gone to a different make-believe violent way to mark a long-distance shot.
The Memphis Grizzlies leading scorer, who was fined $75,000 recently for mimicking pointing a long gun after a basket from outside the arc, acted like he was pulling a pin and tossing a grenade in Thursday night’s 141-125 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Morant, who was 5-of-13 from 3-point range, in some cases even covered his ears after the windmill-like hurl of the invisible explosive.
“That’s my celebration now until somebody else has a problem with it, and I’ll find another one,” Morant said after Thursday’s shootaround.
The league handed down the $75,000 fine on April 4 after Morant twice made what was considered an “inappropriate” imaginary gun-aiming gesture on the court. He was previously warned by the league office that this gesture could be interpreted in a negative light.
The gestures that drew the fine were made by Morant during the Grizzlies’ 110-108 victory over the Miami Heat on April 3, but it first drew the league’s attention in an April 1 home game against the Golden State Warriors.
That led to the investigation and the warning before Morant did it again against Miami.
The fine was the culmination of several questionable incidents involving firearms. Morant was suspended for 25 games at the start of the 2023-24 season after he was seen on video waving a gun in a car. He previously was suspended eight games after he was seen with a gun in a Denver-area nightspot.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Morant said of the latest fine, “just for showing people what’s pretty much been evident for the last two years.”
Teammate Vince Williams Jr. wasn’t really surprised by the change in celebration, adding, “I would have went to that, too.”
“It’s good for him,” Williams said. “He gets to save his money. Anything that benefits him saving his money, I’m all for it, honestly.”
But the grenade celebration drew criticism from the TNT studio crew Thursday night. Kenny Smith noted that Morant “has a history that maybe he shouldn’t be doing that.”
Shaquille O’Neal added: “He knows what he’s doing because y’all are going to keep talking about it.”
As for Charles Barkley, he said the happiest person might be former Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins, fired March 28 because “he ain’t got to deal with this immature stuff.”