In NBA star Ja Morant's gun, social media troubles, I see my students – and my younger self

I am one of those people following the Ja Morant saga and scratching my head. Why would a young superstar athlete, with such promise, jeopardize it to flex with what looks like a firearm on social media?

From all accounts I have read and seen, the Memphis Grizzlies headliner never had to extricate himself from poverty or violence. There has been speculation about a mental health component to his self-destructive behavior, or some yet undisclosed piece of his past that might explain not just his recent actions but a series of other apparent violations of the NBA’s player code of conduct.

It all could result in a substantial league suspension – which could come as soon as Monday, depending on the outcome of Game 5 in the NBA Finals. The Grizzlies have already suspended Morant from all team activities.

What I've learned from my youth – and from my students

Whatever the cause or causes of Morant’s lapses in judgment, I believe they are symptomatic of a larger challenge for young people, especially young men, whom I have come to understand over the past three decades working with young people in inner-city Los Angeles.

It is also something I experienced firsthand growing up in New York City in the 1970s, most poignantly when I was 12 years old and was knocked off my bicycle by a group of guys, beaten up, ridiculed and left humiliated. When my parents let me know the bike didn’t matter – they would buy me another – and thank God I was all right, I was grateful, yes, but it only made the humiliation worse. It wasn’t the cuts and bruises on my body that hurt the most. It was the feeling that I was weak, that as a man I was never going to measure up.

I'm a parent and a teacher: I sympathize with my students' moms and dads – not politicians using them

Years later, I was reminded of that feeling when a student described losing a fight on the street and then having his uncle beat him for losing the fight and ordered him to go back to fight the same kid until he prevailed.

I am glad I didn’t have to grow up like that, and I am now old enough not to romanticize that kind of brutality. But there was a time in my life when I did believe in the fallacy that such violence and brutality could elevate one’s manhood.

How social media and camera phones stunt our emotional growth

To be clear, I do admire people who have endured violence and other hardships, especially – though not exclusively – those who have been able to thrive despite the trauma. And I no longer equate the calluses of such trauma with manhood.

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I no longer even find “manhood” a particularly useful designation and am far more interested in our humanity. If we are going to measure ourselves at all, let it be the degree by which we care about and do for others.

But I am an old man now and have had many years to arrive at these realizations. Ja Morant is 23, an age at which self-consciousness and insecurity can very much still plague us. I did not become a teacher until I was 31 and even at that age, it took a few years to stop fearing the cruelties and judgments of students.

Want your teen to feel happier? Less anxious? Get them off their phone and social media.

I have no knowledge of Morant’s emotional life but I have witnessed plenty of students, including a lot of young men, who, through a social media livestream, tried to make a statement to the world about who they were, about their power and prowess, how tough and cool they were – and wound up in a world of trouble over it.

I cringe at the thought of what would have become of my friends and me if, as teenagers or young adults, we had social media and camera phones and the ability to broadcast our stupidities born of insecurity. For a professional athlete or an entertainer, the audience and the scrutiny are exponentially greater, so the blunders are exponentially more costly.

I hope Ja Morant can overcome whatever is driving him to these self-destructive expressions and realize his potential not only as an athlete but as a human being.

In the meantime, let’s not pretend that his case is not an example of a much larger crisis in our culture, particularly among young people. If a young man with so much success and promise can, for the sake of some misguidedly feigned gangsterism, blow it all up via social media livestream, then what are we doing to all the young people with nothing to fall back on?

Larry Strauss has been a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992. He is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher” and his new novel, "Light Man." Follow him on Twitter: @LarryStrauss

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: After NBA Finals, what will happen to Memphis Grizzlies' Ja Morant?