Silver says Morant not being charged with a crime won't prevent NBA penalties

Denver - Memphis guard Ja Morant not being charged with a crime for twice displaying a gun on social media will not prevent the NBA from handing down more discipline, Commissioner Adam Silver said Friday.

He suspended Morant for eight games in March after the Grizzlies star held a gun in a suburban Denver nightclub while streaming himself live on Instagram.

"Waving them around, displaying them in a certain context, is not consistent with gun safety and is not the proper message that an NBA player, particularly one at Ja's level, should be sending to the tens of millions of followers he has -- and particularly when it's an incident once again, where it's been streamed live on social media," Silver said.

"When we have a standard for conduct detrimental, at the end of the day, it's one based on what we see as the values of this league and what our expectations from our players in terms of the image we're portraying to our fans," Silver said.

There have been 557 mass killings in the United States since 2006, and at least 2,896 people have died, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

The NBA confirmed that individuals it didn't identify were banned from the arena but said its investigation into the January event found no evidence that anyone was threatened with a weapon.