Ja Morant vs Kendrick Perkins Is Officially The First Random Player/Media Battle Of The New NBA Season

Justin Ford. Getty Images.

By all accounts, the start of the 2025-26 NBA season has been off the charts. For those obsessed with ratings, those have been through the roof. For those who care about the product, the games have been awesome every night. For those who care about seeing things we've never seen before, may I suggest taking a look at what Victor Wembanyama has been doing.

Hell, we've even had our first player vs fan moment via Buddy Hield when he told some random Blazers fan to go fuck himself. 

If there's one thing we haven't had so far, it's a media member starting a very random beef with a current player by taking some shots while on a podcast. This may seem a tad specific, but it's something that's become a norm in 2025 and is now just as much a part of an NBA season as anything else.

Who would the first one be? There are a wide range of candidates, but if you had Kendrick Perkins vs Ja Morant on your bingo card, congratulations!

Listen, in some ways, I'm a Perk guy. What he did for my life as a Celtic will never be forgotten. In the name of full disclosure, he and I have actually had multiple phone conversations after going back and forth on Twitter, which was both surreal and something that I always respected. 

But I think we can all agree that while Perk may have been a vocal fan of Ja's, it's patently insane to suggest that he's the main reason Ja blew up/the Grizzlies got more national attention. Let's not forget, in 2021-22, the Grizzlies won 56 games and were the 2 seed. The next season in 2022-23, the Grizzlies won 51 games and were once again the 2 seed. At that time, Ja was a 2x All Star (both seasons), won the MIP award (gave it to Bane who deserved it imo), and made a 2nd Team All NBA in 2021-22 mostly because he was doing shit like this

Since he entered the NBA, Ja Morant has always been must-see TV as long as he's healthy and on the court. Outside of the seasons in which the Grizzlies were completely decimated by injuries, they were among the best teams in the Western Conference, led by Ja. Call me crazy, but I feel like all that may have had something to do with more eyeballs and attention being directed towards the Grizzlies. 

And because we live in 2025, you knew it was only a matter of time before all this got back to Ja, and he would do what's always the next step in these random beefs, which is to tweet about it

(screenshot in the event he deletes it)

While there are plenty of terrible aspects to Twitter and social media as a whole, this is something I've always liked. With how much wild shit is said about players, why shouldn't they clap back and call out the bullshit? It's why I never understood the pushback KD gets when he logs on and exposes that type of stuff. Isn't that the whole point? Getting real-time responses from those involved when stuff like this happens is part of the drama and the entertainment. It's basically why NBA Twitter exists.

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Everyone knows Ja's decision making these last few years has been what I would call…..less than ideal. I can't imagine there's a single soul out there that would debate that. But I find it highly unlikely that ESPN execs then went to Perk and got on his ass for suggesting they pay attention to one of the biggest stars in the NBA who played for a team that was a top 2 seed in the Western Conference. That's what makes the whole thing so bizarre to me. Be mad that he hurt the team and the Grizzlies fanbase. That's what I would consider a normal reaction. What we got instead? It's the perfect level of delusion that makes these random NBA beefs so fun.

So now that we can officially check off this box as well, it's safe to say the new NBA season is officially underway. Great games, historic performances, scandals, player vs fan beefs, media vs player beefs, it's literally only been 5 days! This is why I always say there's truly nothing like the NBA. It's just the best.