Ja Morant was openly unhappy about the officiating on Thursday night and got himself ejected for it.
The Memphis Grizzlies star Morant was tossed in the fourth quarter of his team’s game against the Sacramento Kings. Morant was defending Kings star DeMar DeRozan in the mid-post and got called for a shooting foul off minimal contact (that seemed to be initiated by DeRozan in the first place).
Morant immediately had an animated reaction to express his displeasure with the call. He then yelled and pointed at the referee who made the call (No. 30, John Butler) and was given a technical foul. Because that was Morant’s second technical foul (he was T’d up earlier in the quarter for arguing a non-call on a shot he missed), he was automatically ejected.
Here is the video.
Ja Morant tweaking after fouling DeRozan bro omg pic.twitter.com/SW1so5gPcx
— KingCharge (@KingCharge) December 6, 2024
Another angle appeared to show that Morant was in clear legal guarding position on the play.
Ja Morant ejected after being called for a foul on this DeRozan jumper pic.twitter.com/9XnpiOm4K3
— eric (@EricTweetsNBA) December 6, 2024
It was a frustrating night overall for the two-time All-Star Morant, who had eight points on 2/13 shooting at the time of his ejection. But thanks to seven other Grizzlies scoring in double figures (led by 18 each from Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart), Memphis still beat Sacramento 115-110.
Morant has started a bit slow this season with 22.0 points per game (lowest since his sophomore season) and also recently missed a couple of weeks due to a hip injury. But he definitely seemed to have a legitimate case there with the bad foul call and subsequent ejection (which is not the first controversial ejection that Butler has been involved in).
