The bad headlines continue to follow Ja Morant.
Just a few weeks after a report that a car with Morant and his friends inside pointed a red dot sight at the Indiana Pacers after a game, Morant has again been accused of more outrageous off-court conduct.
Via police reports obtained by Washington Post reporter Molly Hensley-Clancy, Morant allegedly repeatedly punched a 17-year-old boy during a pickup basketball game at his house last summer, and later threatened the boy with a gun.
Here’s how the scene was described according to the Post:
Morant repeatedly punched a teenage boy in the head during a pickup basketball game at Morant’s house, the boy told police. Morant and his friend struck the 17-year-old so hard they knocked him to the ground and left him with a “large knot” on the side of his head, according to a police report narrative written by deputies who said they observed the boy’s injuries.
The teenager told detectives from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office that, after the fight, Morant went into his house and re-emerged with a gun visible in the waistband of his pants and his hand on the weapon, according to police interviews obtained by The Post, which have not previously been reported.
In an interview with police, Morant said he acted in self-defense. “I swung first,” he told detectives, but he believed the boy had been the aggressor because he threw a ball at Morant’s head and then stepped toward him, pulling up his pants. “The ball was to me the first hit,” Morant told police.
Police never asked Morant whether or not the allegation about the gun was true, but neither Morant nor his lawyer denied the accusation. Morant did say that the boy threatened him with violence, claiming he said “I’m gonna come back and light this place up like fireworks.”
The game took place at Morant’s sprawling mansion in Memphis, where the NBA star often hosts pick-up games. The boy who claims he was assaulted by Morant, said that Morant threw the ball hard at him first when he was checking it up. The boy returned a hard pass, but it slipped through Morant’s hands and hit him in the chin. Morant allegedly put his chin on the boy’s shoulder and asked his friend, “Do I do it to him?” The friend responded, “Yeah, do it.”
The friend — allegedly Morant’s longtime friend Davonte Pack — and Morant then allegedly both punched the boy who fell to the ground, and continued to punch him 12-13 times.
Morant told police he only punched the boy once, and did so in self defense after the boy threw the ball at him and then pulled his shorts up, a sign that he was “wanting to fight.”
A few days before the alleged assault, the head of security at a Memphis mall told police he was “threatened” by Morant in the parking lot and a member of Morant’s group shoved him in the head.
You can read about both incidents in their entirety here.
