Ja is making bad choices…again…

John Marant has shown up on a video holding a gun. There are some other things that have happened with Ja over the last year as well, but it's the second time. The first time it was his own Instagram. This one apparently it's somebody else's Instagram. He had a gun in a club.

That's no good. This appears he just had the gun like at a car. But either way, John Marant, it would appear from somebody on the outside, especially one month after the first incident, to be willingly putting his own career in jeopardy.

Gary Parrish from the Gary Parrish Show, Grind City Media, CBSSports.com, Ion College Basketball Podcast. All right, well, is it hyperbolic to say that Ja seems to be jeopardizing his career at this point? I don't think it's hyperbolic at this point. After any one or even three of these incidents, I guess you could say, hey, none of them are good, but the guy still has never been charged with a crime. What exactly is the big deal? Now, I wouldn't have subscribed to that because I just think when you are attached to guns, as often as Ja has publicly been attached to guns, you're walking in some places that I don't think you should be walking as the face of an NBA franchise or the face of a billion dollar company.

But whatever, I can I can see the point. But once the Instagram live from the Denver Strip Club goes public and Ja is suspended for eight games and separated from the team and, you know, checked into a facility in Florida to, quote, work on himself. Right. It is actually unbelievable that he would put himself in this position once again.

And I hope I'm clear in what I'm saying. He put himself in this position once again, self-sabotage by definition. This is not TMZ. Finding video of somebody sneak video in Ja Morant at a party and he happened to have a gun. This isn't some Washington Post investigation or the National Enquirer. This is Ja Morant quite literally this weekend, less than three weeks after promising he was going to grow up and stay out of the blogs all offseason, looking into a camera that he knows is on Instagram Live and bringing the gun into the frame of that camera.

It is mind boggling to understand, to try to understand how or why somebody would do that. And that's why I don't think it's an exaggeration to say there's a core issue here that that has to be addressed, because in the simplest of terms, you don't self-sabotage like this twice in a row in such a short period of time unless you're really I don't know if it's crying out for help or something else, but there's something fundamentally wrong and it's a real problem. Some people, Gary Parrish is joining us, CBSSports.com, but for this purpose, really, Gary is based in Memphis and that's where Ja, of course, plays. Here's the thing about maybe Ja's situation. How much of this is Ja, and it's really all about Ja, and how much is the people that he allows himself to be surrounded with? Because sometimes these influences, not everybody is as smart as LeBron James, who surrounded himself with solid people. And if they weren't solid, I'm sure he got rid of them because all of those people seem to be successful who are who have been around LeBron James and throughout his career. Does Ja just not have a good sense of the people around him?

I think that was the easy thing for Grizzlies fans to say in these previous incidents that Ja needs to change the people around him. But this last incident, if you will, is troubling in the sense that it sort of suggests the alternative might be true. In other words, his buddy, Devante Pack, who has been banned from FedEx Forum for an incident with the Pacers, is driving and is on Instagram Live.

And everything's fine. It's just, you know, if you take it on a surface level, it's just a car full of young guys listening to hip hop and having a good time. In and of itself, there's no problem in that video. But at some point, Ja, in the middle of his friend being on Instagram Live, decides for reasons that make no sense to any reasonable person that he's going to put a gun into the frame of this video. And if you go back and watch it, his friend, Devante Pack, immediately tried to get the camera off of Ja, really shoved it into his shirt. But, you know, with these things, all it takes is a quarter of a second of that video existing and somebody can pause it and zoom in and and what's done is done. But my point is that if you think the people around Ja are the problem, the truth is the only people trying to save Ja from himself in this incident over the weekend were the people around Ja.

It was Ja who who did this. And what makes it especially confusing is that, you know, Adam, in life, particularly when you're young, you can weigh all sorts of pros and cons and make fundamentally bad decisions. But in most cases, you might get away with it. What I mean is, if you decide to run a stop sign, you know that if you get caught, you might get a ticket. But you know that you might not get caught. So let's give it a try and run a red light.

So let's take a step further. You're in a department store. You're considering stealing something. You know that if you steal something and you get caught, there is a price to pay. You'll likely be arrested.

But there is always the chance you might get away with it. Drinking and driving. There will be people who drink and drive tonight, drink at a bar all night long and then drive home. And some of them will not make it. Some of them will be in car wrecks. Some of them will get arrested. But a lot of them will make it. There's a chance to actually get home.

Here's my point. When you're driving around and you intentionally put a gun on Instagram Live, which is undeniably what he did this weekend, there is no getting away with it. There is no, well, maybe I won't get caught. You're 100 percent going to get caught, punished, fined and relentlessly mocked. So what is going on with you that makes you do that anyway?

I don't have a great answer to that question, but that is the question that the people who are around you on the day to day and care about it deeply. That's the question they've got to find an answer for, because this is not normal behavior. And it's not just about being young or young and black or young and black and hard or part of some hip hop culture, because there's a lot of young guys in the NBA.

There's 15 full time NBA players on every team, 30 teams. That's 450 guys and 449 of them are excellent at keeping guns off of social media. And then there's this one guy who can't stop doing it. You've got to figure out why, because that's a real problem. And again, I'm not a psychologist, but if you Google self-sabotage, why do people do it? Sometimes it's tied to childhood trauma. Other times it's because deep down they don't feel like they deserve everything they have. So they sabotage it to make them feel more normal. Again, I'm going to let people smarter than I figured that out, but there's something broken here at its core.

Cause this is not, this is not normal behavior. Job's not the hardest guy in the NBA. He's not the guy who's been through the most. He's not the guy who comes from the streets, but he is the guy who can't stop self-sabotaging his career. That's a big problem.

Gary parish, before I let you go, CBS sports.com ion college basketball podcast, the NBA's response. I said this earlier and I feel like I'm almost, it's possible that I am going too far, but I don't think so because I, the way I framed it was it might be time for Adam silver and the league to save somebody's life. Maybe it's John Moran's life. Maybe it's somebody else's life. Cause you don't know what happens when you bring out a gun in a public place or in a car, who knows what happens. Somebody sees it.

You get into a, some sort of a traffic mishap and then stuff goes completely bonkers. Does the NBA need to suspend him for a long time to get it through? Or I mean, eight games is hardly anything. Um, I mean, I said, why not suspend him for a year? Maybe that will get through.

I'm not sure exactly what the punishment should be or will be, but I do think it, if it's significant, it's warranted. I live in the city. I was born in the city. I technically am an employee of the Memphis Grizzlies. Perhaps we should, you know, state that upfront. Um, but I promise you no matter what the NBA does to John Moran, I will not say, Oh, he didn't deserve that. Right.

Because at this point you deserve, um, whatever you get. And you, you do make a good point that maybe it is time to say John Moran, um, like not to be hyperbolic, but literally his life. Um, I've heard a lot of people over the past 24 hours talk about, Ooh, John's going to mess around and lose that Nike deal. And John's going to mess around and lose that power a deal. Oh, the job ones are nice, but there's never going to be some job to the implication being each time that the worst thing that can happen to John Rand, he's going to lose a lot of money. And I agree that it would stink to lose a lot of money. He just lost $40 million last week by not making all NBA.

He's already lost a lot and he stands to lose more, but when people place the stakes at losing a lot of money or even losing your ability to play in the NBA, the stakes are actually much higher than that. When you are playing guns for real out in the streets, um, the stakes are that gun that you're waving around could end up either accidentally or intentionally hurting you or somebody else. You know, people guns, guns accidentally go off all the time in this country and hurt people.

Um, people who flash guns get in horrific situations all the time in this country, especially in the city on which John Morant lives. And so that's my fear here. Not about John Morant losing a Nike deal, although obviously I wouldn't want him to have to go through that, but you keep running around a city like Memphis flashing guns and, and playing that, that lifestyle. There is a scenario where it doesn't end well for you.

And again, I don't mean to be overdramatic. I'm not predicting John Morant's early demise, but you can't, you cannot operate the way he's operating what he is as when you're as high profile as he is. He has an obligation to Grizzlies into the NBA, but even more than that, you know, on a very human level, he has an obligation to, if nobody else is little girl, you know, it is time to grow up. He promised us three weeks ago that he was going to, uh, that promise seems a bit empty right now, but there's still time. Nothing that has happened is anything that John Morant can't bounce back from now. But what about the next thing that happens or the next things that happens? Eventually something happens that you can't bounce back from. And that's why you should have changed his behavior already. But if this is the thing that has to finally be the wake up call, I hope that it is because you can't keep putting yourself in these situations and expecting everything to work out for you. Eventually things will not work out for you.

Gary parish. You're the man. I appreciate your time, especially on short notice. We'll talk again soon. Hope all is well with you and enjoy the rest of the playoffs. Always good talking to you. Take care. You got it. Gary parish, cbssports.com.