After the NBA fined Ja Morant $75,000 last week for making finger-gun gesture celebrations, the Memphis Grizzlies star has found a new way to commemorate a made 3-pointer.

In the Grizzlies’ 141-125 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Thursday night, Morant mimicked pulling a pin, tossing a grenade and covering his ears following a made 3. It was the second straight game in which Morant had made the grenade gesture, having unveiled it Tuesday when Memphis played at Charlotte.

“That’s my celebration now until somebody else has a problem with it, and I’ll find another one,” Morant said after Thursday’s shootaround.

The NBA fined Morant $75,000 on April 4, one day after the 25-year-old mimicked shooting a gun with his fingers after a made 3 — once in the first quarter and once in the third quarter — in the Grizzlies’ win over the Miami Heat. Ahead of that matchup, the NBA notified Morant he wouldn’t be punished for his April 1 gun-related gestures while playing the Golden State Warriors.

Morant finished with a team-high 36 points and shot 5 of 13 from behind the arc against Minnesota.

Ja Morant ditched the gun celebration for a grenade celebration pic.twitter.com/tgKKWidB5k

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) April 11, 2025

Against Golden State, Morant and Buddy Hield engaged in a verbal altercation that included the gun-related hand gestures. Both players and teams received warnings from the NBA, and the league told each team the gestures were inappropriate and instructed them to stop using them, a league source told The Athletic. The argument from the teams’ side was that the gestures were not intended to be violent, according to the league source.

Despite the warning, Morant continued the gesture into the next game against Miami and received the fine one day later.

Morant, a two-time All-Star, was also suspended twice in recent seasons for gun-related incidents.

In March 2023, the NBA issued an eight-game suspension after Morant was seen brandishing a gun on Instagram Live while at a gentlemen’s club in Glendale, Colo. He also missed the first 25 games of the 2023-24 season due to suspension after he was seen holding a handgun while riding in a car on Instagram Live.

While the NBA does not have a rule against specific gestures, the league has fined players for making gun-related motions before. In 2017, then-Phoenix Suns forward Josh Jackson was fined $35,000 for gesturing toward a fan in a way that appeared to mimic pulling a trigger. In 2015, then-Miami Heat guard Gerald Green received a $25,000 penalty for making a similar gesture.

The NBA caps the fines for on-court conduct at $100,000.

(Photo: David Jensen / Getty Images)

One day last month, while killing time in the visiting dugout at Kauffman Stadium, Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt was asked what he actually did in his previous role as the Seattle Mariners’ bullpen and quality control coach.

The first half of that label seemed obvious enough — bullpen coaches have been around in the majors for as long as anyone can remember. The other half? Vogt, after some explaining, broke into an impression of a television character from a show famed for sending up things like convoluted job titles.

“Quabity. Quabity assuance,” Vogt said, mimicking Creed Bratton, the eccentric and oft-forgetful quality assurance manager in “The Office.” “Why are they asking me so many questions?”

“The Office” gained prominence for its satirization of corporate culture, with its opaque job descriptions and jargon-y buzzwords. But in baseball, life is now imitating art — or at least imitating corporate America — when it comes to coaching titles.

Across the big leagues, the six-person coaching staff (bench, hitting, pitching, first base, third base, bullpen) is practically extinct. Teams have amassed legions of instructors bearing LinkedIn-friendly titles like strategist of performance and data integration (Miami Marlins), game planning and run prevention coach (Boston Red Sox), and major league field coordinator/director of defense, baserunning and strategy (Guardians). You can find just about any title in the sport, outside of assistant to the regional manager.

On Opening Day this year, the ranks of the curiously labeled included three associate managers, three offensive coordinators, five quality control or quality assurance coaches, nine directors or assistant directors of various departments, and more than a dozen coaches with a reference to strategy or game planning in their designations.

The sheer volume and variety of nontraditional titles might feel a bit excessive. Yet, those on the inside say there are legitimate reasons for this proliferation.

“Initially, I was like, ‘Really?’ But now, not as much. Now, I kind of like it,” said Padres manager Mike Shildt, another former quality control coach. “Once you step back, you go, ‘Different doesn’t mean worse.’ … Because of more people and more information, now we can easily and rightfully justify a couple different people absorbing those roles.”

This season, all 30 organizations list double-digit coaches on their team websites. Some bullpen catchers are also billed as strategists, staff assistants or catching instructors. Still, as coaches have increasingly taken up real estate in media guides, their responsibilities often remain mysterious to the public.

So, what exactly did Vogt do for the Mariners in 2023 before he landed one of the most coveted positions in baseball?

“I don’t know what other quality control coaches do, but for me, it was a title that essentially meant I was more than a bullpen coach,” said Vogt, now in his second season managing the Guardians. “I was in hitters’ meetings. I helped the catchers. My fear was that the hitting coaches would be (upset) that the bullpen coach is talking to a hitter, and vice versa.”

Amid the highly competitive environment of the big leagues, Vogt’s concern was not unfounded. In the past decade, however, the world of non-player personnel has moved not only toward greater specialization but also increased collaboration. Analytics and technology have flooded the sport. The prevalence of data necessitates more employees to help translate and communicate information.

“There’s so much work to be done in each area, so the manpower, you need to have it to keep up,” Kansas City Royals manager Matt Quatraro said.

Added Chicago Cubs bench coach Ryan Flaherty, a former big-league utility player: “I think things used to be so siloed. The person with ‘hitting’ worked with hitting, ‘pitching’ worked with pitching, and ‘infield’ worked with infield. And I think now, people just work in a lot of areas.

“I think the hard thing is trying to figure out what to call them.”

As a quality control coach for the San Diego Padres in 2022, Flaherty assisted infield coach Bobby Dickerson with infield instruction and helped oversee offensive game planning. A year later, he was promoted to offensive coordinator, a role in which he continued to prepare San Diego’s hitters for opposing pitchers. “It wasn’t as much technique of hitting as it was understanding pitchers’ tendencies,” Flaherty said.

The bump reflected a trend within a trend — and illustrated a driving force in the modern era of coaching titles. “I think it’s a combo,” Shildt said. “People are trying to prevent people from getting poached, and people are poaching people with a title.”

That was the case in San Diego after the 2019 season. The Padres hired Dickerson away from the Philadelphia Phillies, technically elevating the veteran infield instructor to bench coach. Around the same time, they devised a new position with familiar duties. Skip Schumaker, who had long been viewed as a future manager, went from first base coach to associate manager.

“Nothing too scientific about it,” Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller said. “Ultimately, (Schumaker) was going to be somebody that was going to be really the 1A and the right-hand man to a manager, and somebody who could be developing to go on that track as well.”

Schumaker understood the maneuvering. “In order to get, in my opinion, one of the best infield coaches in baseball, I think they had to create another title for me,” said Schumaker, who went on to manage the Marlins from 2023 to 2024. “The responsibilities were the same as the bench coach. … I think it’s just a way to get guys on staff that you want.”

Other teams have acted similarly. In late 2021, the Texas Rangers made Donnie Ecker their bench coach and the sport’s first offensive coordinator, luring him away from his hitting coach job with the San Francisco Giants. A year later, the Rangers hired then-Boston Red Sox bench coach Will Venable as associate manager. Before the 2024 season, and before he succeeded Schumaker as National League Manager of the Year, Pat Murphy appointed rookie coach Rickie Weeks Jr. as the Milwaukee Brewers’ associate manager.

Murphy’s staff still does not have a bench coach or, at least, anyone by that title.

When you’re fresh in the game and you want to manage someday, I think (naming Weeks associate manager) is an appropriate tack,” Murphy said.

Not all positions are crafted with future advancement or retention as a priority. The Arizona Diamondbacks might have opened a door to nontraditional labels before the 2017 season when they hired a decorated former big-league pitcher as the team’s pitching strategist. “I think we started it with Dan Haren, quite frankly,” Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said.

How did Arizona come up with Haren’s professional moniker? “I don’t know,” Hazen said. “He works on our pitching strategy. I don’t know that we put a ton of thought into the title, honestly. We sort of built it backwards from job responsibilities.”

At times, the title has come first. Shildt recalled that when he became one of baseball’s first quality control coaches in 2015, it was a position “that the (St. Louis Cardinals) created to get me to the big leagues. And even when I got it, there was still like, ‘Now what? What do we do with this?’”

Well before the arrival of the universal designated hitter, the Cardinals tasked Shildt with overseeing bunting instruction for the team’s pitchers. “Then it just started to materialize into more big-picture work, which now is more analytically driven,” Shildt said.

Trent Blank, the Seattle Mariners’ director of pitching strategy, can attest to that shift. A former minor leaguer with an interest in biomechanics, he joined the Mariners in 2018. “At that time, baseball was getting into technology, and we wanted to start a new frontier for the organization,” Blank said.

Now, Blank helps direct the Mariners’ application of technology and analytics, working with pitching coach Pete Woodworth before and during every big-league game. (Unlike Haren, Blank wears a uniform.) In the weeks leading up to each amateur draft, he aids the scouting department with data-based evaluations.

“I think I have one of the best jobs in baseball,” Blank said of his role as a strategist. “It seems like each team’s found their own way to kind of bend that title or those roles and responsibilities to fit what they need at the time.”

Some clubs have taken the pursuit of organizational alignment to new heights. The Guardians, for instance, employ a hitting coach, two assistant hitting coaches, a major-league hitting analyst, a senior vice president of hitting, a vice president of hitting, an assistant director of hitting development, and a special assistant to player development/hitting. Last year, Jason Esposito had the title of run production coordinator. Now, he’s an assistant hitting coach. No one can explain the difference. Meanwhile, Kai Correa is the team’s major-league field coordinator and, in a newly created role, its director of defense, baserunning and game strategy.

“If you think about the old model, you’d have a major-league hitting coach that might not even ever talk to the minor-league coordinator, who might not be involved in what’s going on with the hitting coach there, so you can get very different messages,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said. “We’ve worked to have organizational philosophies and programs that (reflect them).”

Like the Guardians, the Dodgers introduced a title to the coaching lexicon this season. Brandon McDaniel originally joined the organization as a minor-league strength and conditioning coach and eventually ascended to vice president of player performance. He made a more sudden leap in February when the Dodgers announced him as major-league development integration coach.

McDaniel, formerly a behind-the-scenes member of the franchise, is in uniform this season in the Dodgers’ dugout. (MLB regulations used to limit teams to a manager and eight coaches in the dugout during games, with an additional coach permitted when rosters expand in September. A league official said clubs now have more flexibility.) His presence there allows McDaniel to provide immediate input on workload management and facilitate communication between the front office and the coaching staff.

“I recognize that my path is probably extremely different than most people who are fortunate enough to put on a uniform,” said McDaniel, who described swapping ideas with manager Dave Roberts for multiple weeks before they settled on a title.

“People could (say), like, ‘Oh, we made it up.’ But I think we really put some thought into what I was going to be doing every day. At the end of the day, it’s like supporting the coaches, to help develop the players.”

Said president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman: “It’s about making sure we’re covering our bases on every front.”

The current top dog in a copycat industry, the Dodgers, could soon inspire other teams to employ their own versions of McDaniel. With so many different titles and limited public advertisement of responsibilities, perhaps some clubs already have. McDaniel suggested that the coordination aspect of his new position is not dissimilar to that of Los Angeles Angels staff assistant and unofficial “director of fun” Tim Buss.

“I think major-league coaching is one of the big frontiers of the sport,” Hazen said. “The more that you can improve your good major-league players at the major-league level, it can be a separator.”

Still, balance remains important. Hazen said it can be difficult to keep manufacturing new titles “without overrating your staff.” Schumaker, now a senior advisor for the Rangers, warned against the potential complications of having a large number of coaches. “It’s a privilege to be in a major-league clubhouse,” Schumaker said, “and I feel like, throughout the last few years, that’s gotten away from certain clubs, trying to think too outside the box and having too many cooks in the kitchen.”

Regarding the practice of assigning titles to poach coaches or protect against poaching, Murphy said: “There’s a lot of that. There’s no question. It probably needs to be looked at a little bit.”

This past offseason, after Murphy led the small-market Brewers to 92 wins and a playoff appearance, first base coach Quintin Berry left to become the Cubs’ third base coach. Run prevention coordinator Walker McKinven landed the Chicago White Sox’s bench coach job. Assistant pitching coach Jim Henderson interviewed to be the Diamondbacks’ pitching coach and “was close,” Murphy said.

“We encouraged all that and, truth be known, helped it happen,” Murphy said. “I believe in helping your guys, your staff, keep going. That’s what this game is about. If you’ve got an opportunity to move on, I think it’s awesome. If you’re keeping them from better opportunities, I don’t think that’s right.”

Henderson stayed in Milwaukee, where he was given an augmented position as the team’s assistant pitching and strategy coach. The strategy portion of the role includes pregame research of opposing lineups and in-game discussion with Murphy as different situations arise. The casual observer might assume it will make Henderson at least slightly more challenging to hire away.

That, according to Murphy, is not the goal. The Brewers did not replace McKinven, unless you count the expansion of Henderson’s duties.

“We can replace everybody,” Murphy said. “We’re all replaceable. The game’s proven that.”

—The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya contributed to this story.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo: Kenta Harada / Getty Images)

The crash was horrifying.

During a 2018 IndyCar race, the wheels of Robert Wickens’ car clipped those of Ryan Hunter-Reay’s car, launching Wickens airborne and into the fencing surrounding Pocono Raceway. Among the injuries Wickens suffered were a thoracic spinal fracture, a neck fracture, tibia and fibula fractures to both legs, fractures in both hands, four fractured ribs and a pulmonary contusion. He also had a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

At the time, Wickens was on the cusp of stardom in one of motorsports’ premier series. That year, he had seven top-five finishes in 14 races, finished ninth in the Indianapolis 500 and won IndyCar’s Rookie of the Year honor. Those injuries cut short a promising IndyCar career and could’ve meant Wickens’ days as a professional race car driver were over. But that thought never crossed the now 36-year-old’s mind.

“I thought I was going to make the first (IndyCar) race in March the following year,” Wickens said. “We were always talking about what (racing) would look like if I used hand controls. It was never a question; it was a question of ‘How? Where?’ I knew it was something that was possible.”

Wickens, who regained some use of his legs but lacks the full capability to use them while driving, returned to competitive racing a little over three years after the accident, using a hand-controlled throttle and braking system to control the cars. He competed in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge, and in 2023, he captured the drivers’ championship.

And he isn’t done. A new chapter begins this weekend when he moves into an even higher level of racing by competing in the IMSA SportsCar Championship in a race through the streets of Long Beach, Calif. He’ll co-drive a Chevrolet Corvette fielded by DXDT Racing in the highly competitive GTD class, going against Mercedes, Ferrari, Porsche and other top-flight exotic sports cars.

Wickens will be on the grid at Long Beach due in part to an electric hand-controlled throttle and braking system, developed by Bosch and Pratt Miller, that he’s been able to utilize since returning to racing.

Without it, Wickens’ driving career would’ve likely ended in August 2018. However, the system has proven to be an equalizer, allowing him to compete on a mostly level field. And continued technological refinements by Bosch over the past few years have narrowed the performance gap between a car operated by hand controls and one operated by traditional pedals.

The hand control operates like similar systems that can be installed in road cars, except this one has been more fine-tuned to allow Wickens to drive almost as if he were using the throttle and brake by foot. He can lightly tap the brake while turning and thereby carry greater speed through the corners.

“The best thing about my new system with Bosch is that the tuning can happen in the background because this is an electronic braking system,” Wickens said. “So if I want more brake sensation or less braking sensation, I can either have a button on the steering wheel that I tune out of brake pressure that I get to apply to the brakes.

“The old system that I was using when I first started, the system was a very mechanical system where there’s a bunch of linkages and levers that just pushed the able-bodied brake pedal down, but I would squeeze something with my hand up by the steering wheel. … The downfall of that is there was a lot of latency in that system and a lot of inconsistency.”

Because Wickens and fellow driver Tommy Milner must trade off driving the Corvette, Bosch had to develop a straightforward way to switch between Milner using pedals and Wickens the hand controls.

“It’s quite impressive,” Milner said. “There’s just one button that either of us has to push to put it in the mode that we want and that switches all the systems over within a second.”

Once Wickens was committed to racing again, the challenge of navigating the expense and lack of accessibility only further complicated the endeavor. Finding sufficient sponsorship is often problematic enough in racing; Wickens also had to convince a team owner to install a hand-control system in their car.

“There are people racing all over the world with disabilities,” Robert Wickens said. “I’m just fortunate that I had a platform to show my progress.” (David Rosenblum / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Having gone through the process himself, Wickens would like to see such features more readily available in commercially produced vehicles. Just as manufacturers use auto racing to develop technology that can be applied to passenger vehicles, Wickens wants to see the same principle applied to hand-controlled systems to make it both convenient and cost-effective.

“I kind of have naive dreams of thinking that there could be a Robert Wickens steering wheel that can just fit into every road car in the world,” he said. “I’m imagining it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, just plug it in like a USB or something and you’re on your way.’ But I know that that’s just not how it works. …

“The reality is, right now, when I’m driving on the road and I want to make a lane change, for example, I have to consciously over-speed because when I take my hand off the throttle to put on my turn signal, I slow down, and my hand isn’t on the throttle. Then, I have to signal and put my hand back on the throttle, make the lane change, and then take my hand off the throttle to stop your signal. It’s just a lot of extra steps.”

Long Beach is the first of five events in 2025 in which Wickens will drive the DXDT Racing Corvette entry. Plans beyond this season are still being determined. He is open to securing a full-time ride in the IMSA SportsCar Championship if the opportunity arises. He’d also like to race again in the Indianapolis 500.

Wickens downplays the idea that he is an inspiration, but those who know him marvel at how he’s refused to let go of his dream of being a professional driver when he had every reason to quit. He also wants to help others facing a similar situation.

“I personally don’t feel like I’m an inspiration to anybody, but I’m always kind of humbled when people tell me that I am,” Wickens said. “After I was paralyzed and out of my medical-induced coma, I was trying to understand what life I had. I was just working hard to try getting myself and my wife the best quality of life possible.

“There are people racing all over the world with disabilities. I’m just fortunate that I had a platform to show my progress where others might not.”

(Top photo of Robert Wickens: Courtesy of Chevrolet Racing)