Ja Morant, Joshua Holloway should be embarrassed, not embroiled in a lawsuit | Giannotto

As Ja Morant neared his third hour on the witness stand in a Shelby County Circuit courtroom Monday, after he twice had to explain and demonstrate the mechanics of how a check ball works in pickup basketball, after the Memphis Grizzlies superstar’s off-court antics officially crossed over into the realm of the absurd, he was asked about remorse.

Would he apologize if Joshua Holloway, the teenage basketball prospect who is suing Morant for punching him in July 2022 during a pickup basketball game at Morant's home in Eads, were present at this moment?

“Probably not,” Morant responded. “I was protecting myself.”

Right there is the crux of the problem with this civil case, which long ago became a ridiculous waste of time and another shining example of how our increasingly litigious society is taking away resources from legal issues that actually matter.

This certainly isn’t one of those.

This should have been solved with an apology long ago, like the children Morant and Holloway acted like in this altercation. Holloway should have apologized for trying to show up Morant at his own home by hurling a basketball at his face. Morant should have apologized for punching Holloway in retaliation.

Both should be embarrassed by their behavior, not embroiled in a lawsuit.

Instead, we got the eight-hour spectacle that served as yet another reminder of the self-inflicted damage Morant did to himself and his brand in the past year. Morant — just eight days from returning to the basketball court with the Grizzlies after his 25-game NBA suspension — made his first public comments, under oath, since that second Instagram video of him brandishing an apparent gun surfaced.

Holloway's attorney, Rebecca Adelman, attempted to turn Morant's reputation into the centerpiece of her opening argument, turning to the phrase “sportsfluenza” in reference to Morant. It is the mental state of someone who “demonstrates such a high degree of excellence in sports but does not suffer any typical repercussions from their bad behavior,” Adelman said.

“This has led to this kind of self-absorbed immaturity," she added. “We’ve seen there is a propensity for risk-taking, risk-taking behavior.”

To which Morant's attorney, Keenan Carter, vehemently objected. “This is totally inappropriate,” he said to Judge Carol Chumney.

He's right, of course. How Morant has conducted himself outside of the incident that led to this lawsuit is immaterial to the case. But it’s also why this case is receiving so much attention. This was not just one careless decision by Morant. This was one in a series of careless decisions. Perhaps this court appearance will be remembered as his last lesson before returning to the Grizzlies.

"I can't go nowhere. I can't even go grocery shopping," Morant said of the realities of his fame. Now perhaps he understands that sort of caution applies to every facet of his life.

But the hearing will continue with no settlement in sight. Tee Morant, Ja's father, testified Monday and will do so again Tuesday. Davonte Pack, Morant’s best friend and co-defendant in the case, is slated to testify this week — as is Holloway — to determine if Morant can reasonably invoke Tennessee's self-defense immunity statute to have the case dismissed.

At issue here is a check ball gone wrong, and whether Morant acted in self-defense when he hit Holloway. So twice Morant had to get up and show how to properly conduct a check ball, and how this one went awry. First with his own attorney using a Grizzlies branded ball, and then under cross examination by Adelman, with a standard orange one.

Adelman focused her questioning on whether Holloway fired a chest pass back at Morant or a one-handed baseball pass, as Morant claimed in his testimony. So Morant threw a chest pass to Carter and nearly threw it too hard. A couple of hours later, he threw one to Adelman, too. This time he asked if she was ready for it.

She then requested Morant punch her to show how he hit Holloway.

“Nah, I’m all right,” Morant responded, before eventually holding his arm out to demonstrate. It was like a murder trial, except the only thing that died is the common sense of the men suing one another.

Eventually, though, Morant agreed with Adelman that he didn’t need to throw a punch. That “you would have had time to push him. You would have had time to tell him to leave your property,” she said in her questioning.

At one point in her opening argument, Adelman even showed clips of Morant’s best dunks over the years.

“Look at that arm. That’s what he does, Your Honor,” she said as Morant ferociously dunked over an Indiana Pacers player. “ . . . That is the force, the kind of force that came at Mr. Holloway.”

Yes, that’s right. This case has led Morant’s own highlights to be weaponized against him. It led his attorney to essentially call Holloway — now a freshman on Samford University’s basketball team — a liar, because his version of the story has changed several times and differs from the one told by everyone else at Morant’s home that day.

It led to Chumney revealing she played high school basketball at White Station, and led Morant to help her figure out how to mute her Zoom camera during the many times each side's attorneys approached the bench.

"Go play some basketball," Chumney said to Morant when he was done for the day.

"Still have a while," he responded.

It would have been funnier if the actual solution in this case weren’t so simple.

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on X: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis Grizzlies' Ja Morant should be embarrassed, not in lawsuit