“I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was dirty. Steve Kerr, the Warriors coach, was obviously very upset after Gary Payton II’s injury. At the very start of the second set of the second round of the playoffs between the Warriors and the Grizzlies, Gary Payton II went alone against to score his team’s first basket when Dillon Brooks hit him in the air. The Golden State player falls badly and is writhing in pain. The result is without appeal since he suffers from a broken elbow…
“Basketball in the playoffs is supposed to be physical, everyone has to fight. Everyone has to fight for everything. But there’s a code in this league that players follow that you never put a guy’s season or career in jeopardy by mowing him down mid-air and hitting him in the head, and in the end fracture his elbow,” Kerr said, very bitterly. Dillon Brooks broke that code. That’s how I see it.”
If he has to undergo an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) on Wednesday to assess the ligament condition of his fractured elbow, it is already certain that Payton II will not play again this season, regardless of the course of the Warriors.
Aged 29, the point guard joined Golden State last year from the Canadian Raptors, playing in the G League, the antechamber of the NBA. “He’s a guy who’s worked hard trying to make it in the league the last few years, finally found a home and was playing like crazy this year. The play-offs were supposed to be the time of his life. And a guy comes in and hits him on the head mid-flight,” added a very upset Steve Kerr.
A loss all the greater as the first two duels were particularly close. Carried by a gala Ja Morant who scored 47 points and put all his opponents to death, the Grizzlies won 106-101 to come back to 1-1 in this series. If the Warriors will be deprived of Payton II, Dillon Brooks should be suspended after his violent and dangerous gesture.