Sumter is 3 hours from me here in Raleigh, 2 hours from Fayetteville where I spend time and there's a lot of crossover between Fayetteville and the SC Pee Dee/Lowcountry (Fayetteville is less than an hour from the SC border, like 45 minutes)...
I'm too old, I don't know a single person who has known Ja. But him being from so close to here, people who follow ball know that and there's been obvious conversation about him, just in general, since he came into The League...
No one I've ever heard talk about Ja is under the impression Ja is a street cat. People know he has blue collar origins, he didn't grow up in the streets.
Sumter is quite a rough little town, I've been a couple times, maybe twice. He isn't even from the actual city or its rough areas, Ja a country boy who grew up on back dirt roads in a tiny ass town outside Sumter. There's old videos you can find of where he grew up, and more importantly watch his public evolution, he didn't always act the way he does now...
So something changed...
Like I said earlier, he didn't grow up with a silver spoon. But he didn't grow up poor nor did he come from "the trenches", nor I a family that steered that way to him. So this is a voluntary change in behavior...
To your point though, he did go to school in Sumter and grew up close enough, so it's entirely believable he befriended guys who are from that journey in Sumter. I believe that, and it's clear he values the ideas and persona of those kind of people. Those are the people he brought to Memphis...
And yall gotta understand, while Memphis is "small market" in sports terms, it's not an actual "small" city and particularly for Ja, his boys and his family, Memphis is the BIG city. It's a bigger city than anywhere I South Carolina by multiples. It's like cats who grow up in yhe Sip or Arkansas who gravitate to Memphis, same dynamic for Ja. Memphis is a BIG city to him. It's more movement and shyt going on than he's ever been around in his life, he went to college in a Kentucky town smaller than Sumter. He ain't never seen nothing like Memphis...
You take that culture shock and add it with Memphis' brand, relevancy, and popularity in hip hop, that shyt has gone straight to his head. He doesn't know how to handle it...
The Iverson comparisons people are doing, while there's some slight overlap, it's a false equivalency. The only strong parallel is the desire to keep around lifelong homies who you probably shouldn't. Their backgrounds aren't the same. Iverson grew up in the projects in one of Bad News worst hoods, single mother, in the 80s and 90s. Iverson wasn't actually busting plays or shots either but he was from a much more daunting reality than Ja with more influences to go the other way than Ja. Iverson is from that "trenches" reality...
The Iverson comps aren't really just, except if Ja doesn't reign this shyt in he could cost himself a more promising career, just like AI...
profootballtalk.nbcsports.com
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Sassy ass Ngga 
Mans goin thru it
