The details surrounding Ja Morant’s life-changing moment in the strip club are coming out, and the head-scratching moment leaves you to say only in Denver. The dancers at the infamous Denver strip club staple Shotgun Willie‘s are talking, and the word is at the time, they were afraid when he pulled out the weapon.
“He pulled the white boy excuse card: ‘I’m just going through a lot right now, so I’m going to act [like] a fool and put other people’s lives at risk,'” claimed an unnamed dancer who wasn’t in the VIP room but reportedly heard complaints from her coworkers who spoke to The New York Post.
Rain Man
Morant made it rain in the club with tips, per reports dropping $50,000 in $1 bills over two days and creating a pile of paper that could only be captured with a rake.
“The whole room is full of money — it’s literally a pile. You’d need a rake,” one club insider who witnessed the strip club shenanigans said to The New York Post.
Morant was enjoying his life with a brunette only equipped with a g-string straddling his lap in the VIP room that was overflowing with tips. The two-night bender that began on March 1 was lucrative before it got potentially dangerous. Morant, a buddy, and two security guards entered the club just after 1:30 a.m. after the Grizzlies thrashed the Houston Rockets in H-town 113-99.
Morant wasted no time once he got to Denver, booking the VIP Room for three hours some 80 minutes after the team plane landed in the Rockies. The bottom line, Ja was trying to get it in before taking on the Denver Nuggets later that day.
“He was there to party, he wanted some girls in the room,” the insider continued to The Post. “The music was very, very gangster.”
It is Denver, so a hip-hop 808 drum pattern might ruffle mountain feathers.
Ja reportedly paid for four dancers, bottle service, and a platter of food fit for a young superstar: hickory-smoked wings, two platters of chicken strips and fries, and a steak.
That was night one.
“That’s a little excessive, but usually excessiveness is happening all the time,” the insider continued. Not one to be deterred, Morant returned, when a casual night turned into a regrettable moment.
Two Days Too Serious
After losing to the Nuggets 113-97 on March 3, Morant made a late-night beeline back to the same club getting there in the early hours of March 4 to resume the turnup. He dropped 27 points, and ten assists at Ball Arena, then dropped the financial remnants of what would add up to the most polarizing moment in a young career full of polarizing situations.
While chanting “Bring ‘Em Out” by NBA YoungBoy, Morant turned on his IG Live and showed that he had a firearm in the club. To the world, Morant jumped off the deep end and placed his entire blossoming career in jeopardy. To the owner of the strip club, he was “marvelous.”
“This kid, real young, was exceptionally respectful, and sweet and he did not drink [on his second visit],” said Deborah Dunafon, the 72-year-old owner of Shotgun Willies, to The Post. “We’ve had [Denver] Nuggets and Broncos come in and pitch quarters at the girls, be disrespectful and nasty. He’s marvelous.”
It sounds like $50,000 in cash, not coins, goes a long way toward reputation repair in the Mile High.
