Memphis Grizzlies: Ja Morant calls NCAA weight room disparity “disrespectful”

Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant recently made his opinion known on a sensitive topic in the news right now.

If you’ve been watching the NCAA Tournament this week, you’ve probably read or heard about the differences between men’s and women’s weight rooms in college basketball.

If you haven’t, you can see a very distinct difference shown in a tweet from Sabrina Ionescu, a former Oregon Women’s Basketball player and current member of the WNBA’s New York Liberty.

As you can see in the image, the difference between the two rooms is jarring. While the men’s teams have an entire full-sized facility, the women’s weight room looks to be a table with some yoga mats on it and a small set of dumbbells.

The disparity is clear, and for an organization that constantly preaches equal opportunity, they’ve been caught in a bad situation.

It’s not just as simple as dollars and cents either. Sure the men’s basketball tournament brings in more money, but the women aren’t going to get to that point if you keep seeing them the message that they are not worth as much as the men.

Memphis Grizzlies PG Ja Morant weighed in on the issue

Even though the issue of the weight rooms does not impact the NBA, the Grizzlies’ starting point guard weighted on the issue. Here’s what he said:

https://twitter.com/JaMorant/status/1372676194777370625?s=20

Ja Morant has been known to be outspoken on Twitter, so the fact that he’s making his opinion on the situation known is not a surprise. In his tweet, Morant says “disrespectful,” followed by a face palm emoji. He follows this by saying “come on,” clearly showing his frustration after seeing the images.

Unfortunately, his opinion isn’t uncommon. The NCAA has not done a great job supporting their student athletes, and even though it wouldn’t have taken much effort, they were unable to fully support their female student athletes.

This is especially bothersome considering the fact that there is a rule in place requiring equal treatment of men and women in NCAA sports. Here’s an excerpt from NCAA.com:

"Title IX requires the equal treatment of male and female student-athletes in the provisions of: equipment and supplies…"

It’s clear that the NCAA has not given female student-athletes what they are required to give, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fix this situation. Hopefully, we can get to a point of full equality where these conversations don’t need to happen.