The discussion between Dillon Brooks and Suyash Mehta, one of the referees of the game between Houston Rockets and Milwaukee Bucks, was quite heated during the player’s expulsion on Sunday night (17).
The defender was sent off in the last seconds of the match, when the judges reviewed the elbow attack on Pat Connaughton while he was going up for the tray, to mark a possible attack foul and nullify the basket he converted.
Dillon Brooks’ foul, in fact, was marked, to the outrage not only of the player himself but also of the rest of the team, since at the beginning of the game, Brook Lopez had also hit Fred VanVleet in the face with an elbow and nothing was done. marked.
— He pushed me! Are you talking about digging fouls? You’re a fucking bitch, f*ck you! Go back to the damn street,” he said when the foul was called and the basket disallowed, calling the referee into the fight.
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) December 18, 2023
Faced with swearing, Mehta decided to give a technical foul to Dillon Brooks, which caused him to be expelled from the match. Even coach Ime Udoka was outraged by the situation and ended up being ejected too.
Afterward, VanVleet also tried to argue with the referees by showing the bruise on his face from Lopez’s elbow in the first quarter, but to no avail. The Bucks beat the Rockets 128-119.
Judge justifies the expulsion of Dillon Brooks
After the end of the match, Bill Kennedy, the main referee of the match, was asked about the controversial expulsion of Dillon Brooks and the failure to call a free kick for Brook Lopez in an almost equal play.
In his defense, the judge stated that the move was reviewed because of a call, and the foul was called because the Rockets defender committed an “illegal act”, while the Bucks center’s move was not reviewed because they understood it was normal gameplay.
— We observed that Brooks committed an illegal act on Connaughton when trying to score. We penalized Brooks for the illegal contact, nullifying the scored basket. During the live game, we considered the contact between Lopez and VanVleet to be part of a normal basketball movement,” he explained in the official match report.
Kennedy also clarified that the player’s expulsion was not due to the lack of attack, but rather because of the swear words and threats that Brooks made towards Mehta.
— Brooks received his first technical foul for disrespecting a game official using profanity — declared the judge.
