Uncle Phil steps in: Grizzlies star Ja Morant launches advisory firm with family

Move over, Uncle Dennis. Here comes Uncle Phil.

Phil Morant is the chief managing director of a new Memphis-based advisory firm, ILOC. His nephew, Memphis Grizzlies star Ja Morant, is its first client. Uncle Phil and Ja’s mother, Jamie Morant, are both part of the firm that was started and run on a day-to-day basis by former head of Grizzlies security Kevin Helms.

The name of the firm is an acronym that stands for “Internal Locus of Control,” and neither Helms nor Ja’s family members are certified player agents with the NBA. They are, rather, the first employees of an advisory firm that states it will help athletes manage their off-court business opportunities and social calendars, but will not be involved in player contract negotiations.

There are at least two similarities in the arrangement between Morant and his uncle and that of LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard and his uncle, Dennis Robertson. Robertson manages Leonard’s affairs off the court, and like Phil Morant, he is not a certified agent. But, unlike the setup being pursued by the Morants, as described by Helms, Robertson has negotiated with NBA teams offering Leonard player contracts.

Ja Morant, who fired sports agency LIFT Sports Management last season, has said he would negotiate his next contract, though he is not eligible for an extension on his five-year, $197 million contract until the summer of 2027.

“His uncle’s role has been way more in-depth,” Helms told The Athletic, in response to a question about the apparent similarities between Morant’s uncle managing him and Leonard’s uncle doing the same for Leonard. “I can’t speak on the Kawhi thing because I really don’t know about it. But I can tell you that if anybody ever wanted to try to compare Phil with anything like that, that’s completely false. Because that man (Phil Morant) left a very good job the day Ja got into the draft and came here to help doing business affairs. And he’s been doing that since Day 1.”

Helms said Phil Morant was a former regional telecommunications executive in the Carolinas before the Grizzlies drafted his nephew with the second pick of the 2019 draft. Phil was not immediately available for comment, as he is traveling, Helms said.

In a news release shared with The Athletic, Ja Morant, who is 26 and a two-time All-Star but has battled trouble off the court and injuries on the court that have plagued him the last few years, said: “Everything I’ve been through helped me grow.”

“Partnering with ILOC is about taking ownership of my future and surrounding myself with people who understand me, believe in me, and want to help me keep evolving,” said Morant, who has served two NBA suspensions for separate, gun-related incidents. “I’m not just thinking about the next season or the next deal. I’m thinking about legacy, my family, my community and about doing it the right way.”

Helms said Morant’s signing with ILOC is not a “turning point” from his recent troubles, as The Athletic suggested. He said that change happened the day after Morant was in trouble a second time, when a video surfaced on social media of Morant dancing to a song in a car, holding a gun, in May 2023.

Helms, a former law enforcement official who oversaw Grizzlies security until going to work privately for Morant, said he, Morant’s uncle and Morant’s mother had been working on putting in place a structure for the star point guard for two years.

“All we did is continue to put tools and resources in place to make sure that he had what he needed,” Helms said. “Phil and I really started putting this format together and then put our heads together with Jamie to go, ‘Hey, what do you see?’ So it takes all three of us to be able to start saying, ‘Hey, I see these problems. These are some problems that we ran into, and we don’t want to have that happen to somebody else.’ So that’s kind of our basis on it. And then at that time, using the stuff that we were working on that was working for Ja, and from there, we’re like, ‘Hey, I think we might have something here. So let’s see what we can do with it.’”

Helms said ILOC would be open to accepting more NBA players as clients. He said his model for each player the firm takes on is to form a “board of directors” for the player. The board for Ja consists of his uncle, his mother, Helms and Tee Morant, Ja’s father, who is not otherwise working at ILOC. But Helms also stressed that ILOC would not be an agency to negotiate player contracts; instead, an unnamed, certified agent with the players’ union will consult for ILOC clients on an as-needed basis.

“We’re an advisory firm,” Helms said. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We’re just trying to tighten it up for a market that we see for certain players that say, ‘I want to learn how to do this myself.’”

(Photo: Petre Thomas / Imagn Images)