Chicago Bulls star small forward DeMar DeRozan still seems to be smarting after his heated altercation against Houston Rockets counterpart Dillon Brooks on Thursday night. The duo got into it after DeRozan appeared to hard foul third-year Rockets shooting guard Jalen Green, knocking him to the court. Brooks came over and the two eventually had to be separated. Both were ejected from the contest.
Houston would go on to win, 127-117. Per Joe Cowley of The Chicago Sun-Times, DeRozan wanted to explain afterwards why he knocked Green over. But that wasn’t all he had to say.
DeRozan claimed that he did not intend to hard foul Green, noting that he tripped and ran into Green, which caused his spill. The contact did appear excessive at the time, but DeRozan is not generally thought of as a chippy player, so that’s worth considering, too. It’s worth noting that Green didn’t take nearly as much umbrage with the moment as Brooks did.
“I was surprised just from the simple fact that I was trying to hedge out and just be aggressive, obviously bumped him, but if you look at it, I kind of tripped into it,” DeRozan explained. “I’m not dumb. These days it’s just so hard to tell when you go back and look at a review. It wasn’t anything I was trying to do intentionally.”
DeRozan went on to expound on how he felt about the Brooks interaction after the fact. There’s clearly no love lost between the two. Both vets have a surprising amount in common: their careers have been totally revitalized by landing on their current teams in free agency (DeRozan in 2021, Brooks last summer), both are starters on clubs with identical 34-35 records, and both will probably not make the playoffs this spring.
“Just walking up on me in any type of way,” DeRozan said of Brooks. “I don’t play the walking up on somebody when their back is turned. Nah, that’s just not a thing we do. I walked away from the situation after the foul. I just felt like it’s an issue walking up on any man from behind.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.