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Ja Morant stirred controversy during the playoffs when he flashed a gun during an Instagram Live. This was Morant’s second involvement with a gun, having been suspended once previously. Consequentially, many suggested that the point guard could lose a lot of money from his endorsement deals. After the NBA announced Morant’s suspension, a former All-Star gave his thoughts about an iconic brand’s treatment of the Grizzlies’ centerpiece.

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Recently, Commissioner Adam Silver and the league announced that Morant would be suspended for 25 games without pay for his actions. A lot of fans argued that the suspension was “underwhelming” on social media.

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Gilbert Arenas on Nike’s actions after the Ja Morant incident

Ja Morant is set to miss out on a huge amount of money while serving his 25-game suspension without pay. Notably, Ja will be entering the first year of his $194 million rookie max extension he signed with the Memphis Grizzlies in July 2022. The two-time NBA All-Star will reportedly lose $304,545 for every game missed which will be a grand total of around $7.6 million for 25 games.

Amidst this, former NBA star Gilbert Arenas talked about Morant’s endorsement deal with Nike during an appearance on Vlad TV. The host and Arenas discussed the brand’s actions after the controversy. The host noted, “When it all happened, Nike took his sneakers off their site.” Arenas replied, “Stupid!”

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The host continued, “But they just released a new sneaker of his that sold out in two minutes.” Arenas called it “smart”. He could not, however, understand why the brand would remove the sneakers in the first place while comparing the incident with Adidas’ issue with Ye. Arenas argued, unlike Ye, Morant was only causing trouble to himself. He also said that Nike did not have to worry about a “bigger entity” in Morant’s case.

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He stated, “I understand that some of these moves had to be made because there are bigger entities than I was looking at. But with someone like Ja, there’s no enemy. He is the enemy of himself. There’s no victim that you can really say, ‘We’re taking your shoes, we’re gonna get rid of you.’ There’s no victim here but him of his stupidity.”

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Morant reportedly signed a $12.01 million deal with Nike before the 2019 draft. He recently became one of the faces of the brand with his signature shoe.

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Bagavathi Eswaran

1,520 Articles

Bagavathi Eswaran is a senior NBA writer at EssentiallySports, having a strong passion for the sport since the age of ten. As a former college player, Bagavathi has been following the NBA for more than a decade and has found his calling in writing about the sport. He has used his expertise in covering the NBA, as well as other arenas of the sport, to write more than 1400 articles at ES. Bagavathi's pieces on the increasingly dominant presence of European basketball and those following the journey of women-ballers are particularly noteworthy. Along with being a full-time writer, he is also a part of a group of young coaches groomed as trainers by Junior NBA. Bagavathi has trained players from schools and colleges, as well as underprivileged students who can attend the camps for free.

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Jayant Chhabra

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