Dillon Brooks didn’t exactly silence the haters on Monday night. In fact, he now has some haters in the Memphis fanbase as well.
Put simply, Brooks was awful in his return to the court for Game 4 after being suspended for Game 3. Brooks went 5-of-19 while leading the Grizzlies with four turnovers. Brooks said before the game that he was looking forward to being booed by Warriors fans, but it definitely didn’t help his play.
Brooks was similarly terrible in Game 1, when he went 3-of-13 for 8 points. Marcus Thompson of The Athletic believes Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins made a mistake playing Brooks 39 minutes, and said that if Brooks had played in Games 2 and 3, this series would probably be over.
“The irony of all this is he’s probably the biggest talker,” Thompson told Murph & Mac on Tuesday. “He’s the one out there yapping all the time, he’s the one who’s going after Andre [Iguodala] even though it wasn’t Andre’s choice not to play for Memphis it was a mutual thing. That’s the interesting part.
“He’s the one who’s been doing all the yapping, all the talking and he didn’t speak for days about what he did to Gary Payton. Then in the big moments he has a terrible game.
“I thought from the beginning that Taylor Jenkins made a terrible mistake. This would probably be a sweep right now if Dillon Brooks doesn’t get ejected early in Game 2, because to me De’Anthony Melton and Ziaire Williams are just better, they’re more under control.
“You got to have your head on straight against the Warriors. You can’t be out there going nuts playing hero ball, getting out of position. You can’t do that stuff against the Warriors, they’re not the Timberwolves. And that’s Dillon Brooks. Jacking up shots he shouldn’t be taking, playing out of control, being aggressively physical for no reason, picking up fouls. He’s a good player who loses his head because he thinks he’s an All-Star, and that’s exactly how the Warriors beat you.
“To me Taylor Jenkins made a mistake playing him 39 minutes. Ziaire Williams has been great in this series. De’Anthony Melton has been great. And he wasn’t riding with them. He went with the guy he quote-unquote believed in.”
It’s been a tough couple weeks for the Grizzlies “heart and soul”, who looks like he’s going to go out in a feeble manner after talking smack for most of the season. Thompson is interested to see if the Warriors let Brooks and the Grizzlies have it if they win Game 5.
“If they lose this series, and that’s the way it’s trending, I’m just curious how the Warriors are going to respond. Do they go classy OGs and not say anything, or does somebody grab a mic and go in on the Grizzlies. Cause they’ve been doing a lot of talking for the last season. They beat them during the regular season and the Warriors didn’t have anybody there and then they were tweeting out “Strength in Numbers.” That wasn’t even that long ago. I wonder if the Warriors win Game 5 on the Memphis court, I wonder how they handle it.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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