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Dillon Brooks Gets Honest about Hurting Lakers Star With ‘Dirty’ Tactic Before Slapping LeBron James In Ugly Scuffle

Published 01/30/2024, 8:53 AM EST

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USA Today via Reuters

The Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets had a very interesting matchup last night. With a score of 135-119, the Bayou City dominated the Lakers and secured a comfortable victory. However, during that match, there was a lot of discussion about the game played by the villain, Dillon Brooks. He had a couple of scuffles throughout this match, and one of them even resulted in an ejection, not for him though.

Jarred Vanderbilt played for only 7 minutes and in that short time, he managed to pick up two technical fouls and got ejected in the second quarter. The incident happened when Austin Reaves got past the Rockets’ defenders and was going in for a layup. At that time Vanderbilt was waiting for an offensive rebound under the rim and in his attempt to get the ball he shoved Brooks away which earned him a technical foul.

However, after this, Vanderbilt was visibly upset with the way Brooks was guarding him, and this ensued in a verbal altercation. At that moment Brooks had gotten under the skin of Vanderbilt where he lost his composure and hit Brooks on the back of the head which caused his ejection. Dillon Brooks even spoke about the incident and said, “I feel like you know I did a dirty play. But like its basketball, we bump and tussle and I feel he(Vanderbilt) took it too far.” However, this was not the only scuffle he had that night.

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The entire game, the 28-year-old guard was trying to get under the skin of LeBron James by trash-talking him and taunting him yet nothing seemed to work. But then in the fourth quarter, James was seen collecting an alley-oop and trying to dunk it in. However, Brooks got in the way, and in an attempt to block him, he slapped James and drew a flagrant foul. This enraged the 39-year-old star fans as well as his teammates and they expressed their distress after the match.

Brook’s receives criticism for his tactics

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Dillon Brooks’ dirty plays were frowned upon by the Lakers’ fans and also the 8x All-Star Anthony Davis. He expressed his irritation, saying that flagrant fouls should’ve been given to Brooks as he was the one instigating Vanderbilt and James. Davis also supported Vanderbilt for hitting Brooks by saying, “Vando made the right play in that situation.” Not only Davis but even the head coach of the Lakers, Darvin Ham spoke about Brooks’ tactics and defended Vanderbilt saying, “It’s hard to control yourself. My hat’s off to Vando for taking up for himself and his team. It is what it is.”

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Even Coach Ham thought that Brooks should have been ejected after his foul against James but despite all the chaos, Brooks got away from ejection. And it looks like his methods appeared to pay off as the Rockets took home a very important win amidst a bad run.

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So what do you think, are Dillon Brook’s tactics ethically correct or not? Let us know in the comments below.

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Written by:

Dhruv Shastry

720Articles

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Edited by:

Ruth John