Dillon Brooks has some regrets about his latest interaction with LeBron James and the ejection that followed.
The Phoenix Suns’ forward said Wednesday that he was “out of character a little bit, out of my body a little but” in his team’s loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday. The Suns rallied from a 20-point deficit late in that contest, and Brooks drilled a 3-pointer to put the Suns in the lead with about 10 seconds left.
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While James clearly bumped Brooks on the follow-through, which could have been called for a foul, officials didn’t blow their whistles. The league’s Last Two Minute Report deemed that a correct non-call. But Brooks, who has a long history with James, got up and immediately confronted him. Brooks was eventually assessed a technical foul, which was his second of the game and led to his ejection.
“[I need to learn] how to stay in the game and be able to affect the game when I’m in the game,” Brooks said Wednesday, via The Athletic. “That’s my problem through my whole career, is I let those things happen, and then I’m off the floor. Then at the end of the day, how much people hate on me and say I’m not a good player and all that, but when I’m on the floor, it changes the whole game.”
Both Brooks and James picked up early technical fouls in the contest, and James had to be restrained briefly after he thought Brooks tossed a ball in his direction on purpose.
Brooks wasn’t sure why James appeared to get upset with him earlier in the game, but he said he thinks James is tracking him and his comments on social media. He also called James a “social media junkie.”
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James, to Brooks’ point, posted about watching a YouTube golf episode on Wednesday.
“He be all over the socials, so he be seeing I guess what I’m saying,” Brooks said.
“Like I’ve [said] he thinks that people should think a way about him or not say nothing about him or play a certain way, and I’m not going to play that way. He gets in his moods or in his modes or whatever it is. I’m all for that.”
Brooks is averaging a career-high 21.6 points with 3 rebounds and 1.8 assists so far this season, his first with the Suns. The 29-year-old, who was dealt to the Suns from the Houston Rockets this past summer, is in the third year of a four-year, $86 million deal signed with the Memphis Grizzlies.
While Brooks has certainly earned himself a reputation both with James and throughout the league so far in his career — his listed nickname on Basketball Reference is “Dillon the Villain” — he doesn’t think it’s intentional. The play that led to his ejection on Sunday, he said, was just him “being aggressive.”
“I guess it was a timeout, and then it goes back to the rule I never heard of, is that when there’s bumping and stuff — like every single game there is — [the officials] pick and choose whether it’s a technical foul or not,” Brooks said. “You can go to every single game when there’s timeouts, guys are bumping each other. It’s pick and choose.
