Shannon Sharpe Rips Into Ja Morant Over Alleged Incident Involving Pacers Bus

Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant

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You don’t have to be a diehard basketball fan to know the NBA is no stranger to some fairly over-the-top drama.

After all, we’re talking about a league where a player was suspended for pulling a gun on his own teammate in the locker room and some members of the Rockets were accused of using a “secret tunnel” in an attempt to confront the Clippers after a fiery showdown.

Over the weekend, the NBA once again lived up to its reputation for spawning some strange altercations courtesy of a story that surfaced on Sunday concerning what unfolded following a contest between the Grizzlies and the Pacers in Memphis last month.

The incident in question allegedly involved some members of Ja Morant’s entourage, who have been accused of confronting the Pacers while the team was leaving FedEx Forum before pointing a gun equipped with a laser sight at Indiana’s bus.

It didn’t take long for Morant to deny the framing of an incident that reportedly began to unfold when his father Tee exchanged some words with a Pacers player. However, plenty of fans have had trouble giving him the benefit of the doubt based on some previous accusations as well as Tee’s tendency to routinely engage in some Peak Basketball Dad behavior while attending his son’s games.

The elder Morant was recently at the center of a fairly bizarre altercation with Shannon Sharpe at a game between the Grizzlies and the Lakers that took place just a few days before the alleged standoff.

The Fox Sports personality shouldered the bulk of the blame for what went down in Los Angeles, but he was not shy about tearing into the Memphis star while discussing what supposedly went down on Monday’s episode of Undisputed.

Here’s what he had to say:

“I wish Ja would realize that he’s not a thug. Ja is a really good basketball player. Ja did everything he could to lift himself and his family out of this type of environment and to get away from this, and for some reason, he wants to surround himself with these type of people. 

Why? Bruh, you’re not hard. That’s not your life. People in that life would give anything to be in your life. You’ve got a $200 million contract and you want people in the NBA to think you’re hood—to think you’re gangster—because you roll with these type of people. You’re putting yourself in harm’s way when you don’t have to!…

It’s not a good look for you. Stop this, man. This is not you. You played basketball to get out of this environment. I guarantee you’ve got homeboys that probably had talent like you but they chose that life. 

You need to let that go because that’s not you. It’s not. You pretend like you’re hard but you’re not, Ja.”

It’ll be very interesting to see what unfolds the next time these two (or Sharpe and Tee) cross paths.