The Memphis Grizzlies, man. Drama is just following them all over the place so far this season. Well, to be honest, it’s following Dillon Brooks, in particular.
First, it was the near dust-up with Shannon Sharpe a few weeks ago. They got into a spat that felt like it could’ve spilled onto the court at any minute, which was pretty ridiculous.
Now, Brooks is in the middle of a beef with Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell has good reason to be mad, too — it was Brooks that started things this time.
“Him and I have had our personal battles for years. Quite frankly, I’ve been busting his ass for years…The one game he does an alright job on me, he decides to do something like that. There’s no place for that in the game. You’ve got to protect yourself at the end of the day.”
WHEW that is spicy. “Quite frankly?” Nah, man. Mitchell didn’t hold anything back there. As the Grizzlies say, he wanted all the smoke.
A suspension for Dillon Brooks is absolutely the right move.
Donovan Mitchell said it right after Thursday’s Cleveland Cavaliers win over the Memphis Grizzlies that included a melee after Dillon Brooks deliberately hit him in the groin: “The NBA has to do something about it.”
Normally, a cheap shot to the groin from another player might be a fineable offense if there’s no history from the offender.
And when you hear from Mitchell there are other cases of Brooks being dirty that players around the league have noticed, it’s time for the NBA to take a stand and hand down a suspension that will draw the line at what Brooks can and can’t do.
"A line has to be drawn. The NBA has to do something about it. I’m not the only person this has happened to and there’s no place for that in this game. … If you just can’t guard somebody, then just say that. Just get a switch."
This reminds me a bit of Draymond Green back in the 2016 Finals, when a shot to LeBron James’ groin led to a one-game suspension, after a series of dirty plays led up to that moment. The NBA didn’t hesitate in the middle of its championship series when things got to far, and it shouldn’t hesitate in the middle of the regular season.
A one-game break might not seem like a lot, but it’s a warning shot: More of moves like that groin punch and it’ll be a longer suspension.
Announcer Kevin Harlan has put together quite a career with some incredible sports calls. Known for elevating moments with his levity and wit — while also making some hilarious calls of fans that run on the field — Harlan’s the guy you want in the chair for any major sports moment.
On Thursday, Donovan Mitchell and Dillon Brooks got in quite the scuffle during the Memphis Grizzlies and Cleveland Cavaliers game. In the third quarter after falling down on a play, Brooks rolled over and punched Mitchell — who was standing nearby — in the groin.
Chaos then broke out on the court, as both teams congregated with some pushing and shoving extracurriculars after Mitchell hurled the ball at Brooks in retaliation. And narrating it all was Harlan, who gave us some incredible moments, from his “HOLD ON, HOLD ON” call as the shoving began to saying “boink” on a replay of Brooks’ groin shot.
Yep, definitely adding these two to the list of Hall of Fame calls from Harlan. NBA fans were incredibly amused by Harlan’s calls of Brooks’ groin shot.
Dillon Brooks should definitely know better by now.
On Thursday night, as Brooks’ Memphis Grizzlies battled the Cleveland Cavaliers, the forward was caught in a tangle with Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell after a drive. After falling to the court, rather than let bygones be bygones and move on to the next play, Brooks rolled over on the floor and took his time before taking what seemed to be an obvious shot at Mitchell’s groin. (Which had an amusing sound effect from announcer Kevin Harlan.)
Understandably, a small fight erupted as Mitchell took exception to Brooks taking unnecessary low blows while already down and out.
This was not a great look for the Memphis player at all:
Phew. That sure looks like Brooks deliberately swinging his arm toward Mitchell’s groin with intent.
It’s worth noting that Brooks does have a relatively recent history of this kind of behavior. During Game 2 of last year’s Western Conference Semifinals against the Golden State Warriors, Brooks took a dangerous shot to Gary Payton II’s head. Payton II would break his elbow on the play and not return until later in the postseason, while Brooks would be ejected and assessed a Flagrant 2 before eventually being suspended for Game 3.
It’s tough to say now, but it’s hard not to see some sort of disciplinary action coming Brooks’ way after this dirty play directed toward Mitchell.
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It appears that former Oregon star Dillon Brooks hit Donovan Mitchell…below the belt on Thursday night. NBA Twitter had some thoughts after the scuffle.
At this point, former Oregon Ducks forward Dillon Brooks has made a name for himself as one of the more controversial figures in the NBA. As one of the key players for the Memphis Grizzlies, it’s not uncommon for Brooks to be involved in some dust-ups throughout the season.
On Thursday night, Brooks might have been in one of the biggest scuffles of his career, getting into it with Cleveland Cavaliers’ star Donovan Mitchell, leading to both players being ejected from the game. The play that led to the scuffle on the court appeared to come after Brooks when to the ground and flailed his arm, catching Mitchell with a fist to the groin area.
By all means, it did not look like a clean play, to say the least.
As you would expect, with a villain in the NBA committing an act like this on the court, the Twitter world went wild. Here are some of the best reactions after the incident.
Memphis has outscored opponents by 220 points during minutes when Brooks has played, which ranks sixth-best among all players in the Western Conference. Whatever he is doing, it is contributing to winning. Winning tends to follow Brooks. He was one of the main reasons why Oregon had unprecedented success for the program when he was on the team.
It is on the offensive end of the floor, however, where Brooks has a serious problem. He may be averaging 15.9 points per game, but there are concerns.
Brooks was never known for his efficiency, although this has been the least efficient offensive season of his professional career.
Alongside the likes of Russell Westbrook and Marcus Smart, as well as young guards like Jaden Ivey and Josh Giddey, he is one of the least efficient high-usage players in the NBA. He takes a ton of midrange shots but does not make them at a high clip.
His shot selection plays a significant role in these blatant inefficiencies, but he does not believe that it is a problem (via Drew Hill):
“I guard my [expletive] off every single night. I give my heart every single night. My guys can live with some of the shots I take. I’m learning and growing in that. My coaches be on me about being more of a playmaker. Six assists tonight. Kudos to me.”
Memphis star guard Ja Morant confirmed that the Grizzlies “don’t care” about Brooks’ shot selection. Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins, meanwhile, explained that Brooks “might force one or two or something” just to get himself going.
Might this become a problem for the offense during the postseason?
Brooks has always taken challenging shots, especially when in transition, according to BBall-Index. He tends to finish as one of the players who have the lowest-quality shots in the league.
Another useful stat that could potentially help illustrate this point is Simon Gerszberg’s version of Shot Quality, which uses over 90 variable inputs to determine an individual player’s shot-making ability:
“Each shot is graded on a 0-100 percent scale, which represents the likelihood the shot results in a made basket, and then is multiplied by the amount of points attempted to get the ShotQuality value … If a player has [a] possession that is below the 33rd percentile then they’re credited with a bad possession.”
(Skip ahead to see the results; keep reading to learn the process.)
So to give an example, let’s say Brooks took a difficult 2-pointer (2) only considered 30 percent (0.30) likely to go in based on his previous looks. That attempt would get a shot quality score of 0.15 because that is the result of 2 multiplied by 0.30.
For comparison, if he took an uncontested 3-pointer (3) with a 45 percent (0.45) chance of going in, that shot quality score would be 1.35 because that is the result of 3 multiplied by 0.45.
Bad possessions are currently attempts with a shot-quality score that is lower than 1.10 because that is the 33rd percentile in the NBA so far this season. Meanwhile, good possessions are all attempts with a shot-quality score that is greater than 1.17 because that is the 66th percentile.
This, as you could imagine, would be graded as a bad possession:
Even if you don’t understand the math, the results are noteworthy.
According to the database, 73.6 percent of Brooks’ shots are considered bad possessions so far this season while only 16.2 percent are graded out as good possessions.
To put that in perspective: Among the 219 players who have finished at least 250 offensive possessions, only two (Detroit’s Killian Hayes and Oklahoma City’s Tre Mann) currently have a higher frequency of finishes defined as bad possessions.
For comparison, last season, there were 409 players that finished at least 150 offensive possessions. But no one in the NBA had a higher frequency of bad possessions than Brooksdid (77.1 percent) in 2021-22.
SEASON
Good Possession (via Shot Quality)
Bad Possession (via Shot Quality)
2022-23
16.6%
73.5%
2021-22
18.9%
77.1%
2020-21
22.6%
66.6%
2019-20
22.2%
52.1%
The season prior, with the same qualifications, Brooks finished with the ninth-worst bad possession frequency rate (66.6 percent) and the highest among those with at least 800 finishes.
Curiously, however, he was nowhere near as bad (52.1 percent) during his 2019-20 campaign. That means that over the course of the past few seasons, Brooks has become more and more emboldened to take potentially reckless shots.
Using a different methodology that you can learn about here, Synergy has its own version of this metric: Synergy Shot Quality (SSQ). Once again, skip to the charts if you don’t care about the equation and just want to see results.
SSQ is their version of shot quality — or expected points per shot based on the variables listed above. Points Per Shot (PPS) is exactly what it sounds like: How many points per shot was the player able to score?
SSQ is divided into three categories to grade shots: Low (< 20th percentile), Medium (20th-80th percentile), and High (> 80th percentile).
Synergy Shot Making (SSM) is PPS subtracted by SSQ. Those who make more shots than expected based on the difficulty of their attempts will have high SSM scores
Here are the results of Brooks’ shots considered to have low SSQ:
SHOTS WITH LOW SSQ
LOW SSQ FREQUENCY
SYNERGY SHOT MAKING (SSM)
POINTS PER SHOT (PPS)
SYNERGY SHOT QUALITY (SSQ)
2022-23
29.6%
-0.09
0.74
0.83
2021-22
16.4%
0.01
0.79
0.78
2020-21
23.9%
-0.01
0.80
0.81
2019-20
24.3%
-0.09
0.71
0.80
2018-19
20.3%
-0.12
0.63
0.75
2017-18
21.5%
-0.15
0.58
0.73
So far this season, Brooks’ frequency of attempting shots defined as low by SSQ is at a career-high 29.6 percent.
During each of the previous two seasons, Brooks’ Points Per Shot (PPS) on low SSQ attempts was nearly identical to the expected SSQ of each attempt. That put him at least relatively on par with league expectations.
This season, however, his SSM (-0.09) has fallen far below expectations.
(ALL FGA VIA SYNERGY)
SYNERGY SHOT QUALITY (SSQ)
POINTS PER SHOT (PPS)
SYNERGY SHOT MAKING (SSM)
Jaden Ivey
1.05
0.93
-0.13
Russell Westbrook
1.03
0.93
-0.10
Lu Dort
1.08
0.97
-0.10
Kelly Oubre Jr.
1.08
0.97
-0.10
Bennedict Mathurin
1.06
0.96
-0.09
Scottie Barnes
1.08
0.99
-0.09
Dillon Brooks
1.01
0.92
-0.09
Saddiq Bey
1.04
0.96
-0.08
OG Anunoby
1.13
1.05
-0.08
For The Win spoke to Synergy’s Todd Whitehead, who provided us with this interesting data about low SSQ shots during the 2022-23 campaign. Among the 79 players who have at least a total of 500 FGA so far this season, only six have a lower overall SSM so far than Brooks.
According to Whitehead, the leaders in SSM so far this season are Kevin Durant (+0.25), Nikola Jokic (0.23), Stephen Curry (+0.22), Luka Doncic (0.16), and Donovan Mitchell (0.16).
DeMar DeRozan can (and should) continue to shoot confidently like Kobe Bryant and take shots that are considered low quality (0.92) because his points per shot (1.03) exceed expectations.
Brooks is not Kobe Bryant. Still, however, he is taking shots (1.01) considered approximately as difficult as Damian Lillard (0.98), Kyrie Irving (0.99), Mitchell (0.99), Curry (1.00), and Tyrese Haliburton (1.00).
“Dillon Brooks thinks hes the reason Kobe wore 24” might be the funniest tweet ever. every dumb shot he takes, it reminds me of that tweet
His shot-making (-0.09) is nowhere near as good as the likes of Lillard (0.12), Irving (0.14), Mitchell (0.16), Curry (0.22), and Haliburton (0.15).
Overall, Brooks’ Offensive Box Plus-Minus (oBPM) currently ranks third-worst in the NBA among all qualified candidates. He is simply not a good enough scorer to get away with these ambitious attempts.
Brooks may not have the worst shot selection of anyone in the NBA, but he absolutely is in the conversation. If the Grizzlies are going to make a serious run this postseason, this needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.
Former Oregon Ducks forward Dillon Brooks spoke out after his halftime altercation with Shannon Sharpe during the Grizzlies Lakers game.
Former Oregon Ducks forward Dillon Brooks was among a handful of Memphis players irritated with Fox’s Shannon Sharpe and his behavior during the Grizzlies’ loss to the Lakers.
“I ain’t talking about that,” Brooks said of his heated exchange with Sharpe, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “You can ask him. He’s the blogger or whatever he is. I don’t really care about all that. Next question.”
Sharpe and several Memphis players – including Brooks, Steven Adams, Ja Morant, and Morant’s father Tee – engaged in a shouting match with the Pro Football Hall of Famer, to the point where security and officials had to get involved.
Sharpe spoke about the incident, targeting Brooks specifically for his role in the encounter.
“They didn’t want this smoke, Dave,” Sharpe said. “They do all that talking and jockeying and I ain’t about that jockeying. It started with Dillon Brooks. I said he was too small to guard LeBron. He said, ‘F— me.’ I said, ‘F— you’ back. He started to come at me, and I said, ‘You don’t want these problems.’ And then Ja came out of nowhere talking. He definitely didn’t want these problems. Then the dad came and he obviously didn’t want no problems.”
Brooks is averaging 16.1 points and a career-high 3.5 rebounds for the Grizzlies, who are in second place in the Western Conference.
Yes, that Shannon Sharpe. And those Grizzlies. This is all so wild
No, you did not read that headline incorrectly. Shannon Sharpe got into it at the Lakers game with the entire Memphis Grizzlies team and Ja Morant’s dad.
It all started with a spat between the Undisputed co-host and Dillon Brooks. Sharpe told Brooks he couldn’t guard LeBron James in a much less kind way. Brooks responded. Sharpe responded back and then things just unraveled from there.
What follows is everything we know so far about the incident. In the time since LeBron James has reacted, Dillion Brooks has also reacted and Sharpe peaced things up with Ja Morant’s dad.
Fox Sports 1 personality Shannon Sharpe found himself accosted by multiple Grizzlies players during their 122-121 loss to the Lakers.
The Los Angeles Lakers raised a few eyebrows on Friday evening when they overcame a 13-point second-half deficit to defeat Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies, 122-121.
The Grizzlies had been on an 11-game winning streak coming into the contest while also claiming the highest defensive rating in the NBA. Still, the Lakers came out on top because they were the grittier and more resourceful team down the stretch.
But that wasn’t the only action going on inside of Crypto.com Arena.
At the end of the first half, Fox Sports 1’s Shannon Sharpe got into an altercation with several Grizzlies players, including Morant and Dillon Brooks, and Morant’s father even got into it as well.
Tempers flare in the front row here at the Crypt — where Shannon Sharpe, Steven Adams and Papa Tee Morant exchange words and have to be kept apart before heading off in opposite directions. pic.twitter.com/EtMiSDY3sv
Apparently, Sharpe, a Hall of Fame NFL tight end during his previous career, told Brooks he was too small to guard LeBron James, which is when the melee ensued.
On “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed,” the show Sharpe hosts with veteran journalist Skip Bayless, he is known as a huge fan of James who never passes up an opportunity to praise or defend the four-time MVP.
Klay said he forgot about the NBA’s taunting rule.
Due to various injuries he had suffered, Golden State’s Klay Thompson had not played an NBA game on Christmas Day since 2018.
Needless to say, Thompson was particularly excited to get back on the court when the Warriors faced off against the Grizzlies. The Warriors were without Stephen Curry but still managed to win, 123-109. Thompson finished with 24 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 assists.
Perhaps the most memorable moment of the game, though, occurred when the four-time NBA champion was called for a technical foul after standing above Memphis Grizzlies wing Dillon Brooks.
Thompson hit a 3-pointer and on his way back to the other side of the court, Brooks then tripped and fell to the floor. Thompson used this opportunity to stare down the former University of Oregon standout:
As entertaining as it was to see the usually laid-back Thompson so animated, it definitely went against the rules of what can and cannot go down during an NBA game.
After the game, Thompson was asked about his motivation for this decision and he said it was just some trash talk. He added that while he didn’t think it warranted a technical foul, he forgot about the NBA’s rule against taunting.
Klay Thompson: "It's always fun to talk trash. We've been doing that since we were in middle school. So that's when you either play your best or you get frazzled. For me, it's usually the former."
Thompson said Memphis “can’t talk dynasty” if they haven’t won before.
Brooks, the longest-tenured player on his team, referred to the Grizzlies as a dynasty back in March 2022:
“From the beginning, we were growing a base, we had a base and we kept building and building and building and more guys got on the train and we were able to create something like this and keep building this dynasty and this program up to new heights.”
Brooks has also said that the Warriors are “getting old” and know that the Grizzlies are coming for them every single year.
When the two teams met in the postseason, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr stated that Brooks “broke the code” during a flagrant foul that injured Gary Payton II. Grizzlies star Ja Morant mocked Kerr’s comments in a since-deleted tweet.
There is a lot of bad blood between these two teams and it was not exactly shocking to see Thompson react this way to Brooks — who blamed the refs for letting it happen.
![Donovan Mitchell had an honest explanation for Dillon Brooks’ low blow: ‘I’ve been busting his [expletive] for years’](https://feeds.usatodaysports.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Memphis_Grizzlies_at_Cleveland_Cavaliers-1200x800.jpeg)
