Bomani Jones was one of many sports media members talking about Ja Morant on Monday. The Grizzlies’ star is suspended from the team following another video featuring him flashing a gun was posted on Instagram Live.
This is the second time this has happened this season. The last time, Morant was in a strip club in the video. That led to the league asking him to take some time off.
On his podcast The Right Time, Jones said part of the problem with the way we are talking about Morant right now is that everyone is seeing the actions through their own lens. He said that he thought his ESPN colleague Jalen Rose was guilty of that when the two sat down for an interview earlier this spring.
“What happened with Jalen Rose with that interview, that I think that if he had a chance to go back over and do what he would do differently, Jalen saw himself and saw some of the mistakes that he made and saw a dude who he felt like was making similar mistakes,” Jones said.
The March interview was not without controversy. While Rose’s NBA Countdown teammate Mike Greenberg said it was an interview that only Rose could do, Dan Le Batard viewed it as evidence that the audience does not care if interviews are actually good as long as they have access to the game’s top names and stars.
On Monday’s episode of The Right Time, Jones said that he thought what Rose saw was a young NBA star making bad decisions and it felt like he could relate. That may have changed the way Rose approached Morant in the conversation. In Bomani Jones’s eyes, it wasn’t that simple
“I don’t think they’re the same person. I don’t think they’re going through the same things,” he said. “I don’t think the issues they had were necessarily the same, but Jalen saw himself in this young man, and I think that powered the way that he viewed this, right?”
The NBA season is over for the Memphis Grizzlies, so it would not be likely that Morant would feel the need to talk anytime soon. The NBA may also be aware of a PR loss that could come from giving his first interview after this new incident to Rose once again. Time will tell if Jalen Rose will indeed get the chance to approach Ja Morant in a different way.
