{"id":303782,"date":"2025-11-23T16:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T16:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303782\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T16:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T16:07:08","slug":"story-of-his-career-klay-thompson-ja-morant-exchange-post-game-barbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303782\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Story of his career’: Klay Thompson, Ja Morant exchange post-game barbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ja Morant<\/a> is once again in the spotlight for off-court reasons.<\/p>\n

Morant, who was sitting out his third straight game due to a calf strain, confronted Thompson after the final whistle, appearing to say “you a bum now.”<\/p>\n

He also crashed teammate Cam Spencer’s post-game interview.<\/p>\n

“Tell him who the best shooter in the house was,” Morant said. “It wasn’t bro from Golden State.”<\/p>\n

In the locker room later, Thompson responded to Morant, saying his comments were “nothing of intelligent depth.”<\/p>\n

“It was really just running his mouth, and he’s been running his mouth for a long time,” Thompson said, per ESPN<\/a>. “It’s funny to run your mouth when you’re on the bench. It’s kind of the story of his career so far, just leaving us wanting more.”<\/p>\n

Morant has played just 12 of the Grizzlies’ 17 games this season due both to injuries and a one-game suspension for conduct detrimental to the team.<\/p>\n

He was also previously suspended twice in 2023 for incidents with guns, those two events costing him 33 games and about $8.3 million in salary.<\/p>\n

“We all want to see him out there and do his best, but he’s just been letting a lot of other stuff get in the way of that. We need that in the NBA. We need our best players to be out there, and when you’re a star, it comes with a great responsibility. I hate to see that go to waste,” Thompson said.<\/p>\n

Thompson, who has struggled in a bench role, scored a season-high 22 points off the bench and matched a season best with six three-pointers for the Mavericks, who split a home back-to-back and have yet to win consecutive games this season.<\/p>\n

Early in the fourth quarter, Thompson and Grizzlies guard Vince Williams had words, resulting in technical fouls on both.<\/p>\n

Thompson also approached Santi Aldama after he tripped Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg, resulting in a flagrant foul Grizzlies forward.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks and Grizzlies don’t meet again until Feb. 27.<\/p>\n

–with files from The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ja Morant is once again in the spotlight for off-court reasons. Morant, who was sitting out his third…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-303782","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}