After a recent Memphis Grizzlies game, Lil Baby got Ja Morant’s signed, game-worn jersey and recited some of Ja’s favorite NBA YoungBoy lyrics.
The 4PF boss went to see the Grizzlies play the Hawks in Atlanta on March 26. After the game, he found Morant and gave him the superstar’s blue jersey right off his back. When Ja signed the shirt, he made sure to write a personal message to Lil Baby.
“Love Brudda!!!” Morant wrote on the back of his jersey next to his signature, while Baby hollered in his Gucci hoodie: “Parade inside my city, yeah!,” referencing YoungBoy’s opening lyrics from 2022’s “Fresh Prince of Utah.”
Do you know that Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant used a chance to go down in sneaker history? Morant’s first pair of Nike shoes with his name on them will come out against the Golden State Warriors. Morant showed off his official Nike logo in a funny way:
In the 123-119 win, Morant had the most points on his team with 27. The 23-year-old likes to quote NBA YoungBoy’s song “Fresh Prince of Utah,” and the Grizzlies have made the lyrics into something of their own catchphrase.
The NBA star showed up at teammate Santi Aldama’s postgame interview after the team beat the Dallas Mavericks last week and recited a line from YoungBoy’s Realer 2 song.
Morant shouted while Aldama joined him in repeating the bars (as reported by HIPHOPDX) –
“It’s a parade inside my city, yeah!”
But UNDISPUTED host Skip Bayless doesn’t like it when Morant quotes the troubled rapper from Baton Rouge.
Bayless said to co-host Shannon Sharpe –
“If I just take quoting a rap lyric in a vacuum, it’s like so not a big deal that it’s laughable that we’re even discussing it.”
“But we can’t, when it comes to Ja, take it completely out of the context of what he just went through. So, I’ll just say this: it was not a good sign that he quoted that rap lyric.”
“Ja jumps right in the middle of it because he can’t restrain himself. And he quotes a rap lyric, ‘It’s a parade inside my city, yeah!’ And it’s just straight jubilation … The problem is that line comes from a song that’s just rife with gun violence, well a lot of rap lyrics have [gun violence].”
“But then, said rapper, if you go back and look at his recent past, he’s been in jail several times for robbery and attempted murder and all kinds of assault charges, so he fits the part of the song, he’s actually playing the role of the song.”
“It’s not the best look to quote that rap lyric just as you’re coming back from dangling a gun. In a vacuum, it’s the smallest deal. In context, it’s a reasonably big deal, to me.”
The Grizzlies banned Ja Morant for eight games after he showed a gun on Instagram Live at a strip club in Colorado in March. During his time away from the group, Morant went to a counseling program in Florida for a short time.
He played his first game again on March 23 against the Houston Rockets, as the Grizzlies kept trying to win the NBA title. With only eight games left in the regular season, they are currently the No. 2 team in the Western Conference.
