Mavericks fans hate him and it is rumored that Mark Cuban had him removed from the press pool.

Starting in the spring of last year he was assigned to Memphis and started relentlessly covering Ja Morant. He has never been a reporter with team or local sources but suddenly he was releasing a story every week about Dillon Brooks being a problem, or Ja being a problem. Since he joined our pool he has reported nothing but negative stories about our players or our organization.

Todays article follows his approach throughout this process, which has at every step of the way been designed to alienate Ja and prevent his reform.

  1. Todays “expose” is not prompted by any new behavior. It’s effectively an analysis of previous behavior but those events have already been covered and Ja is currently severing a punishment from those events.

Public temperature towards Ja has relaxed over the summer, as he has behaved, but this article is designed to remind everyone of his previous failures.

  1. The article is framed as holding Tee and Memphis accountable for Jas behavior. Ja has never blamed the team or his dad for his behavior, but this framing makes it seem like “Ja won’t take responsibility for his behavior” or “Memphis wants Tee to take the fall.” None of that has been claimed.

  2. This article includes lots of “context” that has nothing directly to do with Jas behavior. Rap or R&B being played in Jas vicinity is presented as something causing Ja to act a certain way. This framing suggests Ja is not able to listen to rap music without acting it out, which is disrespectful. It also suggests implicitly that rap makes people violent which is the kind of dog whistling that I thought ended with Tipper Gore.

  3. Rather than document Tees motivations for his behaviors it speculates from third parties. Other people are evaluating Tee as wishing he was in the NBA but he has never said that. That third party speculation is presented as reality.

The framing of this article is fundamentally negative towards Ja, his family and the organization and seems to intentionally underplay anything Ja is doing to better himself or the positive aspects of his relationship with teammates and his father