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Dillon Brooks poked the bear during the Memphis Grizzlies’ first-round playoff series loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, and it backfired in spectacular fashion.
Yet he still doesn’t regret it.
“That’s who I am,” he told reporters Sunday. “I’m a competitor. I compete. I don’t think it got LeBron ‘geeked’ up. He’s back in the playoffs, it’d been a little while. He was ready to play.”
Brooks turned heads when he had a back-and-forth with LeBron James during Game 2 of that series, which Memphis won, and then told reporters, “I don’t care. He’s old. … I poke bears. I don’t respect no one till they come and give me 40.”
Verbally challenging one of the NBA’s all-time greats was certainly a choice, and things quickly went downhill for him and his team in the aftermath. He was ejected for a flagrant-2 foul on James in Game 3, the Lakers won the series in six, and Brooks struggled while shooting 31.2 percent from the field and 23.8 percent from deep across the six games.
Then the NBA announced Sunday it fined Brooks $25,000 because of his “failure to participate in team postgame media availability during the first round of the 2023 NBA playoffs.”
James didn’t say much during the series, but he took to Instagram in the aftermath with an apparent reference to Brooks that said: “If you ever see me fighting in the forest with a Grizzly bear, HELP THE BEAR.”
The entire scenario put Brooks under quite the spotlight, especially since he is a role player for Memphis. That spotlight now shines on him as he enters free agency this offseason, and he did not rule returning as he spoke to reporters Sunday:
Parker Fleming @PAKA_FLOCKA
Dillon Brooks on free agency and his chances to be back: “They can possibly be good but I’ll leave it to my agent to handle that” — wants to focus on being better this summer
Clayton Collier @ClaytonJCollier
I asked Dillon Brooks if he felt he could operate in a ‘less talk, more walk’ environment if he is back with Memphis next year:
“I can operate in any environment.”
Geoff Calkins @geoff_calkins
Dillon Brooks did not rule out coming back. But he said he’s not going to change his approach to talking. And he was critical of his role: “I felt like, with all this criticism, I could have gave a lot more. And I wasn’t given enough.”
Yet Grizzlies general manager Zach Kleiman said, “There were definitely some self created distractions in the series and along the way. We are going to take a different approach (next season).”
Kleiman added that he will “hit on Dillon another day,” when pressed for a specific answer on Brooks.
That was anything but a commitment to the Oregon product in the early portion of the offseason.