Things got out of control on Thursday night as the Cleveland Cavaliers hosted the Memphis Grizzlies in what turned out to be quite a battle. At one point in the game, Cavs star Donovan Mitchell got himself ejected after nearly starting a brawl with Dillon Brooks and the rest of the Grizzlies squad. Thankfully, cooler heads eventually prevailed and the game was able to continue. Without Mitchell, the Cavs were still able to get the W, 128-113.
After the game, Mitchell got brutally honest about the incident. The Cavs superstar revealed that there has actually been some bad blood brewing between himself and Brooks:
“That’s just who he is,” Mitchell said of the Grizzlies forward. “We’ve seen it a bunch in this league with him. Him and I have had our personal battle for years. Quite frankly I’ve been busting his a– for years — playoffs, regular season. The one game he does an aight job on me today, he decides to do something like that. There’s no place for that in the game.”
In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is the incident that led to the heated altercation. After falling to the floor, Brooks seems to have used his arm to hit Mitchell in the nether regions. The Cavs guard took exception and it nearly erupted into a brawl:
Mitchell did not have anything nice to say about Dillon Brooks. He admitted that he’s had some beef with his Grizzlies counterpart for quite some time now and that it all came to the surface on Thursday night:
“This has been brewing for years,” Mitchell admitted. “With me, with other guys in the league. You’ve all seen it. It’s not something that — this isn’t new. Tonight was just the end of it.
“It’s tough when you can’t guard somebody (and) you can’t do something to somebody, you gotta resort to that. That’s what he’s done to a lot of players. On the top of my head, I think [Damian Lillard], [Stephen Curry]. It’s just one of those things that you resort to, and that’s cool.”
As you may have gathered, Donovan Mitchell clearly doesn’t like Brooks. Without directly saying it, the Cavs star has implied that Brooks is nothing more than a dirty player and that this is far from his first rodeo.