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Ja Morant switches to grenade gesture after NBA fined All-Star for finger-gun 3-point celebration

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Ja Morant switches to grenade gesture after NBA fined All-Star for finger-gun 3-point celebration

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.

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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.

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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)

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Do You Recognize These Lines From Popular Science Fiction?

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Do You Recognize These Lines From Popular Science Fiction?

Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.

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Test Your Memory of These Books That Changed the World

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Test Your Memory of These Books That Changed the World

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.

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Finding Wisdom in a Poem by Wendy Cope

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Finding Wisdom in a Poem by Wendy Cope

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Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?

How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.

Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.

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To wit:

Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?

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I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.

Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.

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Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.

This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …

Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.

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Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.

Question 1/7

Let’s start with the first stanza.

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Stop, if the car is going clunk 

Or if the sun has made you blind. 

Dont answer emails when youre drunk. 

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Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.

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