A lot has happened in the world of basketball since the first round of the Western Conference playoffs between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies this past season. This has included one of the, for lack of a better word, main characters from that series changing teams, as Dillon Brooks left the Grizzlies to join the Houston Rockets on a lucrative deal in free agency.
Brooks went at it with LeBron James on a few occasions during the series, with Brooks calling out James in the press only for James to get the last laugh by moving on in the postseason. Fast forward to today and Brooks is with Canada’s national team at the FIBA Basketball World Cup, but he still can’t escape the feeling that he had James right where he wanted him during their matchup in the playoffs.
“I feel like I always had him,” Brooks said in an interview with Arash Madani of Sportsnet. “I feel like that series was thrown upon me cause of the words that I say, but I’ve been saying things all year and we won 50 games.”
After a Grizzlies win in Game 2 of the series, Brooks said that he likes to “poke bears,” called James “old,” and made clear that he doesn’t respect any player until they score 40 points on him. He ended up getting ejected from Game 3 for hitting James below the belt and was unable to stop James from scoring the basket that clinched a Laker win in Game 4. Once the series ended, James went onto Instagram and issued a response to Brooks, saying “If you ever see me fighting in the forest with a Grizzly bear, HELP THE BEAR.”
