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Ja Morant sits back in a chair being serviced by a woman in a Denver nightclub. In the VIP suite dollar bills are scattered all over the sprawling floor looking like a thousand pieces of confetti.
Two nights later Morant puts on his video camera. Shirt off, dancing, swerving, appearing to be hammered.
Dangling a gun, smiling.
At 5 am. Same Denver nightclub.
There’s more. It’s mid-afternoon. The sun is out. He’s streaming himself live wandering around his pool next to his mansion, slurring his words, encouraging his friends to chug more beer. This aimless video goes on for more than 20 minutes. A peculiar pool party gone off the deep end. Eerie, actually, not funny nor entertaining. Like a prelude to suicide.
Ja put these videos on the Internet. Now the world can see what he’s been up to. His team, the Memphis Grizzlies, announced he won’t be playing for at least four more games. Don’t expect him back the rest of the season.
I think back to when I was 23, the same age he is now. I was meandering, drinking, staying out late at bars, and acting foolish with my friends. I spray painted the word “Wednesday” on my car. Anything to get attention. I ran away to Sarasota, Florida with no real plan except to become a bartender at night and write novels during the day. Didn’t pan out.
A lost soul, a confused person, grabbing for substances to make me deal with my troubling thoughts and fragile emotions. Just like Ja is right now.
We’ve all been adrift and partied to ease the pain of uncertainty and fears about our situations, fearing the future.
Twenty-three is a terrible age. It’s the start of adult life for most of us and we’re not good at it. We don’t want to be adults. We want to remain kids without all the worries and responsibilities.
Blink 182 recorded a hit song “What’s My Age Again?” that captures the twisted mindset we often have at age 23.
Nobody likes you when you’re 23.
My friends say I should act my age.
What’s my age again?
What the hell is wrong with me?
Nobody should take themselves so seriously.
With so many years to fall in line.
Why would you wish that on me?
What’s my age again?
I never wanna act my age.
What’s my age again?
Reflect on those words. I hear in them the crying inside Ja Morant, yearning for something, afraid, overwhelmed, a 23-year-old lost at sea.
As the song says, it seems that nobody likes Ja Morant right now. Not his teammates or coaches who were on their way to a playoff run and now, without their superstar, have no chance of advancing far.
Not his sponsors including Powerade, who now have the guy they chose to be the face of a branding campaign shamed for untrustworthy and decadent behavior and horrible judgment. Money and time wasted.
Where to begin? And where will this end?
Do you know a guy who shares the same initials as Ja Morant? Johnny Manziel. You remember his meteoric fall from pro football player to party-fiend, out of the league, binging his brains out, never to realize his potential as a gifted athlete.
Manziel’s story was tragic in terms of blowing a high-paying career opportunity few others get. But Morant’s story looks now to be even more self-destructive.
You’ve seen Michael Jordan fly through the air. Morant flies as high – maybe higher – than MJ. Gifted, a natural, a consensus first-team All-American in college, selected to the All-Star game this season.
A dunker of the highest class. A rare talent, the second guy picked in the NBA draft. A million kids his age aspired to do that and he’s the only one who did.
Did his fame all come too fast? What’s wrong with him? Why is he flushing all his enormous good fortune down the toilet?
Morant was reportedly headed towards earning more than $200,000 playing basketball. Who would risk all that for a few physical indulgences at a nightclub, partying with the fellas, showing off a gun, and drinking his face off?
Your answer is Ja Morant. This can’t be rational thinking. This must be immaturity, acts of desperation, or just plain self-indulgence. Count me guilty of exactly those same mistakes at his age.
Who knows what substances Ja has been taking to get high? Cocaine? Opioids? What we know for sure is he drinks alcohol. The videos scream that.
Everyone reading this has probably abused alcohol including me. At 23 we all misbehaved. Because we were scared, we rebelled against everyone telling us we had to become adults and be more responsible for ourselves. We didn’t like hearing that.
Some of us grew out of that phase. Others didn’t. What’s clear in Ja’s case is he can’t keep drinking alcohol at the pace he has been or he’s bound to get in more trouble and his play will decline, leading to who knows what else but surely getting paid less money than he had been destined for before his life exploded the past few weeks.
Alcohol ruins lives. We’ve all seen this. The president of Wake Forest University when I went there in the 1980s, Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., shared thoughts on alcohol’s destructiveness in his book titled Leaves From a President’s Notebook: Lessons on Life and Leadership.
If you go through college believing that having a good time, being with your friends, overcoming shyness, and feeling accepted involves abusing alcohol, the risks to your future are enormous.
Do not abuse the gift of freedom, especially when it is new. Do not experiment with substances and forms of conduct that are deadly. Alcohol is a drug. Abuse it, and it will ruin your life.
I agree with this. Drinking alcohol could have destroyed my life but I stopped several decades ago and my life is more stable because of this.
Morant’s rise to fame has been so fast it’s hard to blame him for not knowing how to handle it. Four years ago Ja Morant was relatively unknown, a player for a mid-major school called Murray State. He wasn’t heavily recruited by Division 1 schools. While at Murray State his talent blossomed and all of the sudden he became a hot NBA prospect.
Then he was drafted second, became a star, and came into an avalanche of material riches.
So he starts consuming more alcohol. Why not? It’s fun. He’s young. He’s 23. Who cares if no one likes you when you’re 23? Let’s roll, fellas.
So Ja rolled. Now he’s somewhere, in a tragic mess, trying to get his life back on the rails. He’s experienced a head-on collision with real life.
I don’t pretend to be a substance expert. But I suspect his recovery has to start by addressing his drinking problem. Alcoholism is a chemical and psychological dependency. The way to beat it, I’ve been told, is by going to facilities for alcoholics and then for the rest of your life attending regular Alcohol Anonymous meetings. He has to stop drinking for the rest of his life.
Drinking caused your life to spiral downward. Whenever I have drunk alcohol it’s ended up being a mistake, a detour into more sadness and frustration, run-ins with authorities, and underperformance. Most bad things that have ever happened to me have involved drinking alcohol.
I hope Ja addresses this drinking issue. He can’t keep going to the booze when he feels stressed about his basketball career or whatever else. He has to deal with that stress in some other way. Medications help. One good way to keep busy and away from the sauce is practicing basketball incessantly.
But I’m not here to give him advice or judge him. I’m not a life coach. More than that, I have no idea what it was like growing up in his house, what insecurities he feels, what friends he has, how they influence him, how his father treats him, and what values he learned or didn’t.
Yes, he’s made colossal mistakes these past two weeks. But haven’t we all? Being everyday citizens, few people know about our misbehaviors because we aren’t NBA superstars the public wants to know about. They want to know about Ja.
Of this I am certain: This is not the time to write this guy off, and it never will be. This is not the time to say “serves him right, he had it all and threw it all away because of his selfishness.”
No, let’s not do that. Let’s not give up on this guy. He’s a human being. He may have extraordinary basketball talents and make many millions of dollars. But he’s just a young guy struggling with life like the rest of us.
Let’s not be those people who don’t like 23-year-olds. Have compassion. Let’s wrap our arms around this guy and love him. Tell him he’s going to find more fulfillment. Remind him his life isn’t over.
Remind him we all have made big mistakes as he has. Not just at age 23 but throughout our entire lives.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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