The NBA announced Thursday that Grizzlies wing Dillon Brooks has been suspended for Game 3 of Memphis and Golden State’s Western Conference semifinal series for breaking Gary Payton II’s elbow on Tuesday.
It’s not enough.
He deserved to miss the rest of the series.
Brooks’ bush-league hack on Gary Payton II’s head as the Warriors guard went for a layup early in Game 2 Tuesday led to Payton breaking his elbow, in all likelihood ending his postseason.
It wasn’t an accident. You can’t pass off Brooks’ hack as a poorly timed attempt that the ball. Brooks barely jumped and never came close to the ball. He wound up and no one can convince me he wasn’t aiming for Payton’s head.
And while I don’t think Brooks’ goal was to seriously injure Payton, he certainly did something premeditated and unnatural on a basketball court that inherently carried the risk of injury.
What did he think was going to happen?
The same question can be asked of me and anyone else who expected Brooks to be given an appropriate suspension.
One game is the absolute least the NBA could have suspended Brooks. It just doesn’t sit right that Brooks will be on the floor in Game 4 and beyond while Payton will be on the bench in a cast.
But by not coming down hard on Brooks — by doing the bare minimum — the league is setting up the rest of this series to be a brutal mess.
An ejection and a one-game suspension for that?
Outside of decency — a good deal of which has already been tossed aside in the two games already played his series — what’s to stop a Warriors player from taking out Ja Morant mid-air now? What’s stopping someone from diving into Steph Curry’s knee?
There’s a difference between hard-nosed and dirty. The Warriors have been in enough playoff series to have seen it all. There are PJ Tuckers (plays hard, throws a few elbows, dives for loose balls, but deserves respect) and Matthew Dellavedova (scrappy to the point of dangerous).
Did the inexperienced Grizzlies receive a lesson in the difference between the two from the Brooks incident?
I don’t think so.
In criminology, there’s a “broken windows” theory. In short, it’s the belief that “if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.”
Now, the theory is not without valid criticism in the real world.
But I think it can apply to the basketball court and this situation.
Some teams — usually less talented ones — are always looking for the line of acceptability when it comes to physicality, especially in the playoffs.
Now, Brooks clearly crossed the line. But did his ejection and one-game suspension create any dissuasion?
Not a chance.
The NBA’s weak enforcement of Brooks’ foul will encourage Memphis to continue its whack-a-Dub strategy for the rest of this series. The Warriors might get in on the action, too, though I don’t know if anyone but Draymond Green is built for such a fight.
A home-court whistle in San Francisco could mitigate the effects a bit, but the physicality will remain the same if indeed it isn’t ramped up in the games to come. And with this series looking destined to go six or seven games, that’s either going to create an unwatchable, whistle-filled slog of a series or it’s going to be a downright dangerous environment to hoop.
Neither is a good outcome. Neither is befitting of this stage.
The NBA playoffs have always been a war of attrition. The games are simply too intense. The burdens on players are too great. Stress and exhaustion can do some crazy stuff to the body.
This series looks like it will take that truth to a whole new level.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope the nastiness is behind us — that it’ll be physical, but respectful, the rest of the way. Because if it isn’t, this series will not be discussed as a great battle between two excellent teams. No, it’ll be referred to as a scourge on the game.
