Steve Kerr, Steph Curry Lambast Dillon Brooks For Perceived Dirty Play In Game 2

The Golden State Warriors are up in arms following the incident between Gary Payton II and Memphis Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks early in the first quarter of Game 2, leading to the latter getting a flagrant two call and an ejection.

Head coach Steve Kerr made his feelings about the situation known in the postgame press conference.

“I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was dirty and playoff basketball is supposed to be physical… There’s a code in this league that players follow where you never put a guy’s season and/or career in jeopardy. Dillon Brooks broke the code, that’s how I see it,” he said with much frustration.

Kerr would also confirm to the press that Payton did suffer an elbow fracture because of the incident and will be having an MRI on Wednesday, May 4 to determine the extent of the damage and how long he will possibly be out of action.

The Inside the NBA crew of Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley discussed the play and whether it was dirty or not.

Both O’Neal and Barkley partially agreed that it was a bang-bang play, with the latter noting how Payton attempted to catch himself on the fall with his arm, instead of his shoulders and back, caused the injury, and explained that Brooks was not necessarily a dirty player because he had no history of being such a player.

In Smith’s mind, he explained that Brooks’ lack of experience to go for the hard foul and hitting Payton on the head did break the players’ code of conduct to protect each other despite being in competition with one another.

Warriors star Stephen Curry was also asked about his thoughts on the matter and had more subdued comments compared to that of their head coach.

“It was kind of out of line in terms of a defenseless player going up for a layup and him taking a huge wind up. Everything bad that could have happened in that situation did and knocked him out of the game. We’ll see what happens with his injury. If you want to talk about flagrant two’s, that’s definitely one of those,” Curry lamented.

As NBA fans await the severity of Payton’s injury, physical therapist Dr. Evan Jeffries used his expertise on the matter and gave an initial prognosis of the young guard being out for at least four weeks.

With Game 3 taking place in Golden State’s backyard, the Warriors are surely going to be fired up as they look to defend homecourt from a Grizzlies squad that was led by Ja Morant’s 47-point performance in their 106-101 victory to take Game 2.