Source: Brennan Asplen / Getty
It began during Tuesday night’s game between the
Memphis Grizzlies and the
Golden State Warriors, when a benched
Buddy Hield pointed finger guns towards the court while his teammate Jimmy Butler was shooting foul shots with little more than 20 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
After the free-throw attempt, a timeout was called, and that’s when Morant returned the gesture in Hield’s direction, leading to even
Draymond Green gesturing to the referee about Morant’s behavior.
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Both players were issued technical fouls, and the morning after,
ESPN’s Shams Charania announced that the league was looking into the gestures before later giving them both a warning, ruling “that the celebrations were not intended to be violent in nature but were inappropriate.”
However, Morant’s a habitual line stepper, and he pulled out his finger gun celebration the day after the warning during a Thursday night game against the
Miami Heat. It came when he scored his first basket and again when he sank a three-pointer in the third quarter.
The 25-year-old did leave the antics alone when it counted most at the end of the game when he hit a stepback jumper at the buzzer, securing the 110-108 win.
After the game winner, though, the attention turned back to his finger guns, and Morant knew he’d get hate for it.
“I feel like I’ve been the villain for the last two years now,” Morant
said in the locker room. “Not even just to this crowd. Every little thing, if somebody can say something negative about me, it’s going to be out there. So, yeah. I don’t care no more.”
Morant’s history with guns is lengthy, stemming from an incident where he
flashed a gun on Instagram Live while at a nightclub in 2023, for which he was suspended for eight games. Then, just two months later, he pulled a similar stunt that led to his suspension for the first 25 games of the 2023-24 season.
While the finger guns aren’t nearly as dangerous, he continued to do it even after the league warned him not to, so they’ve now fined him $75,000.
NBA executive vice president of basketball operations Joe Dumars made the announcement, adding that “Morant was previously warned by the league office that this gesture could be interpreted in a negative light.”
See how social media is reacting to Morant’s latest brush with NBA officials below.
