Kyrie Irving Refusing To Accept Dillon Brooks' Jersey Swap Is Just Further Proof That Nobody In The League Can Stand Him
In a battle of two Western Conference hopefuls between the 2nd seeded Memphis Grizzlies who have quietly won 3 in a row and get Ja Morant back tomorrow and the 7th seeded Mavericks who are desperately trying to get out of the Play In Tournament, you could say things were pretty important. There's potential for this to end up being a first round matchup, and a huge part of the Grizzlies 112-108 win was how they defended in that 4th quarter.
Down 96-83, the Grizzlies put the Mavs in jail over those final 12 minutes to the tune of a 29-12 quarter, holding the Mavs to just 14-10% shooting. Kyrie Irving, who had been rather dominant through the first 3 quarters (28 points on 10-16), was held scoreless on 0-8 (0-4) while playing 9 of the 12 minutes in the 4th.
Part of that was the work of Dillon Brooks (32 possessions, 13 points), part of that was JJJ's ability to switch and guard the perimeter (a DPOY candidate) and maybe the biggest story of this game was Santi Aldama coming off the bench for a monster 22/14. Huge win for the Grizzlies as the Kings also lost in UTA.
As is often the case with the Grizzlies, of course there's more to the story than what happened during the actual game. It should also not be a surprise that this time it once again involves Dillon Brooks. No, I'm not just talking about him getting a tech for talking shit which will now lead to a suspension because he's over the limit. I'm talking about the post-game jersey swap
I'm sure it's happened before, but I can't remember a time where a player straight up refused to take another guy's jersey during one of these interactions. Even if they don't keep it I feel like you always seem the players exchange the jersey, and as you can see Kyrie had absolutely zero interest in owning a Dillon Brooks jersey. Something tells me he's not alone in that regard.
He said all the right thing after the game, even though I can't imagine a single person on the planet believes him
and the funny part is this is one topic that I feel like not only the general public but also fellow NBA players would support. Grizzlies fans don't even like this dude. You can sort of understand why
which is why I find it very hard to believe Kyrie was just "locked in on what's next" in that moment and that's why he didn't grab the jersey. Again, this isn't an attack on Kyrie, it's just funny that everything the internet says about Dillon Brooks is actually kind of true. I think that's what made Draymond's rant so great. It hurts because it's true. Even though the Warriors are lame for playing the 4 rings card every time those two teams play, that doesn't make what Draymond said wrong.
Like I said, I'm sure there are instances where this has happened before, and there will be instances where it happens again. You just cannot convince me this was an accident. Not when that guy is Dillon Brooks. I may disagree with a lot of what Kyrie does both on and off the floor, but this one I get. I just wish we could have heard his honest response about it, but we all know there was no way in hell Kyrie was going to feed the media machine with it.
As they say though, actions speak louder than words.