Exclusive: NBA star Ja Morant’s summer of trouble went unchecked by authorities despite accusations, a Post investigation found. The Memphians who allege Morant targeted them say police and the NBA failed to hold the basketball star accountable.
Morant has expressed regret for flashing the gun. He sought counseling, he said, and acknowledged he needed the “time away to become a better Ja.” But he has otherwise waved away allegations of violent and menacing behavior. “All those incidents you seen recently — most of them is a lie,” Morant said in anThe NBA and Grizzlies have not publicly countered that notion. When the league suspended Morant,was only in response to Morant waving a handgun while intoxicated.
“I was actually afraid,” said Busby, an aspiring science teacher who, at 5-foot-3, is nearly a foot shorter than Morant.
“I went to make sure my mom was safe,” Morant said. “Once I realized that, you know, I left the scene again.”Busby was not named in the initial police report and has not previously been interviewed. Employees at Finish Line, in the Wolfchase Galleria mall, said they couldn’t speak about what happened, but they referred a reporter to Busby, who agreed to a phone interview.
“I was actually scared to walk out, because I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Busby said. “I’ve never been in a situation like that ever in my life.” The report lists the potential offense as “intimidation.” It lists Morant’s mother as “Suspect #1 Unknown,” despite her identity being a Google search away. And though Busby said it was Ja Morant who did the intimidating, the officer did not refer to him as a suspect in the report, which helped shield the report from the public eye. Memphis Police told The Post it had no reports listing Morant as a suspect.
That’s when Morant punched him in his face, Holloway said, while Morant’s friend “snuck” a punch to the back of his head. The teenager described falling to the ground, attempting to cover his face with his arms, while the men continued to hit him. “Adrenaline was rushing, and they was asking me questions, and I was just answering them,” Holloway said. After the police left, “everything started coming back to the picture, and my thoughts started to settle down,” he said. “That’s when I started thinking about everything that happened.”
Morant wasn’t arrested that night, or ever. The case stagnated, records show, without Morant being interviewed about Holloway’s allegations. Two weeks after the altercation, however, the Morant family met with a lieutenant to file their own complaint, alleging that Holloway threatened “to light the block up” as he left Morant’s house. The Morants feared Holloway was going to “come back and shoot at them with a firearm,” they told police, according to a report.
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