'A quagmire situation' - What Ja Morant's return means for a teetering Memphis Grizzlies season - ESPN

«WHAT IS YOUR occupation?» a lawyer by the name of Keenan Carter asked. «I play professional basketball for the Memphis Grizzlies,» Ja Morant replied. It was 1:45 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 11, and Morant was testifying from the witness stand in the century-old Shelby County Courthouse in downtown Memphis.

Wearing a black jacket and a white shirt, Morant faced a wood-paneled wall lined with portraits of robed judges while sitting next to the one presiding over a lawsuit accusing him of assaulting Joshua Holloway, then 17, in July 2022.

Less than a mile away — but practically a world away — was FedExForum, where, in better times, Morant's occupation would be on display. But, on this day, he was serving a 25-game suspension by the NBA — one that was set to expire in a matter of days.

In the courtroom's gallery, family, friends and witnesses to that 2022 altercation on the basketball court in the backyard of Morant's Memphis-area home looked on. Reporters and cameras tracked his every move, as they've done since he arrived that morning to Tennessee's largest courthouse, an ornate neoclassical compound stretching across a city block and featured in the 1991 horror film «The Silence of the Lambs.»

Early in Morant's testimony, his attorney, Carter, retrieved a basketball from under a table and tossed it to his client. Morant tossed it back. Carter again passed it to Morant, who passed it back. It was, naturally, a Memphis Grizzlies basketball.

The point of the exchange, manifesting itself as legal inquiry, was to demonstrate a typical check ball during a pickup basketball game.

Because, in their telling of what transpired, Morant's lawyers contended Holloway, frustrated with losing several games, rifled a one-handed pass that hit