Nike's App Has Apparently Pulled Ja Morant's Signature Shoe
When Ja Morant was suspended for the first time this season, there was a thought that his actions may have cost him an All NBA spot, which in turn cost Morant an additional $39M over the next 5 seasons. Sure he still has that 5/194M extension that kicks in in 2023-24, but $39M more is still a decent chunk of change. I would imagine most players would prefer to have that cash as opposed to not.
Well, after his latest incident and pending suspension of some kind, it looks like there's another shoe to drop. Or maybe not drop?
You'll remember what happened with Nike the last time there was an issue with a high profile point guard earlier this seasow
They wasted no time cutting ties with Kryie Irving. Of course, there are some differences between the two situations, but with Morant specifically, this is not the first time we've seen a company do this
Now because you can't believe everything you see on the internet, I did some Big J investigation and downloaded the Nike App myself. I searched for the Ja 1s and nothing came up. There were some screenshots that it was still showing up, but there's probably some sort of tech explanation for that. I just looked 10 minutes ago and it was blank.
However, on the SNKRs app, it still shows up. What does that mean? Is that app just slow to update? Admittedly I am a moron and have zero clue how any of that tech stuff works. I also have no idea if there are other cases of a player's shoe not showing up on the Nike app but existing on the Nike SNKRs app. I guess it would then not surprise me if nothing happens or if Nike drops Ja completely. It's all on the table really.
After hearing how Adam Silver talked about this incident, I think it's anyone's guess what the league's punishment will be.
We're getting all sorts of speculation right now that it could be 20 games, half a season, who knows. The one thing we do know is that something is coming in terms of a suspension. As we know, in life there are consequences to your actions. While what Ja did may not have been illegal, to immediately do the exact thing that you just told Adam Silver you wouldn't do any more is a big time slap in the face. When it comes to endorsements and being the face of something, public perception kind of matters. Whether it's fair or not, when you make all that money and are the face of a franchise/league, there are different rules. I thought Chuck had a pretty interesting perspective on this very thing last night
Time will tell how this all plays out, but usually with this stuff where there's smoke there's fire. All because a dude couldn't resist flashing a gun on the internet. Again.