Dillon Brooks will Dillon Brooks!
The Houston Rockets’ newest offseason addition is already seeing to it that his paycheck is a little bit lighter … the NBA fined the guard/forward $25k for hitting Pacers’ player Daniel Theis where the sun don’t shine.
The league announced their punishment on Thursday, two days after Brooks took a cheap shot in the first few minutes of the Rockets’ 122-103 win over the Pacers in a preseason game on Oct. 10.
The whole thing was caught on the live broadcast … Brooks, who was guarding Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin, threw his left arm at Theis, who was setting a screen.
Brooks connected, and Theis was clearly in pain as he hunched over before kneeling down on the court.
Dillon Brooks was ejected from the Rockets’ preseason game 😅 pic.twitter.com/qWt0RwQBzA
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 11, 2023
@SportsCenter
Brooks received a flagrant foul and was ejected … and now he’s gonna pay, literally.
“Houston Rockets guard-forward Dillon Brooks has been fined $25,000 for recklessly making contact with Indiana Pacers center Daniel Theis in the groin area,” NBA Executive VP and Head of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars said.
It’s obviously not a great start Brooks, who signed a 4-year, $80 million contract with the Rockets after a troublesome ’22-’23 season with the Grizzlies.
New Rockets’ head coach Ime Udoka spoke about the incident, telling the Houston Chronicle he actually loves the overall “aggressiveness and physicality” from Brooks, but added “reputations carry in the NBA, and people will look for certain things.”
“You got to monitor that better.”
The Rockets season opener is less than two weeks away. 🏀