Taunt the Lakers and get burned: Dillon Brooks is about to find out

The Los Angeles Lakers played Game 2 of their seven-game series against the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday and although they were without their star point guard Ja Morant, Memphis was able to even the series at 1-1 much to the chagrin of Laker Nation who saw the shorthanded team as an opportunity to steal both games in Memphis.

Ja’s absence, caused by his hand injury, seemed to vitalize the young and hungry Grizzlies however, resulting in them jumping out to an early lead and not looking back.

Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell were both abysmal on offense, and although AD finished the game with a whopping 6 blocks, the defense in the paint was non-existent leading to a 22-point, 13-rebound game for Xavier Tillman and wide-open lane for Bane and company all game long.

League-known pest Dillon Brooks was also unfortunately able to get some shots off as well, including a dagger three late in the game which solidified a result we saw coming for about the entire 4th quarter.

Those, however, were not the only shots the 5th-year shooting guard out of Oregon took. In the 3rd quarter of Wednesday’s game, he got into a war of words with LeBron James as he picked up his 4th foul of the contest. Nonetheless, in his post-game interview in the Grizzlies’ locker room, he took his antics to an unseen level, even for him. He came for the King.

"“I don’t care — he’s old. You know what I mean? I was waiting for that. I was expecting him to do that Game 4, Game 5. He wanted to say something when I got my fourth foul. He should have been saying that earlier on. But I poke bears. I don’t respect no one until they come and give me 40.”"

As well as:

"“I let him know that you can’t take me one-on-one. You haven’t. You can go look at the film, he doesn’t really take me one-on-one until that moment.”"

And lastly:

"“He’s not at the same level as he was when he was on Cleveland, when he was winning championships in Miami. I wish I got to see that. It would’ve been a harder task, but I’m playing with what I got.”"

All of that bulletin board material in one post-game locker room interview seems like a lot. Because it is. Now, I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t attempt to bring anything more out of the greatest player of all time than he is already bringing to every playoff matchup.

As mind-boggling as it might sound, this is actually not the first time a player has decided to put a little too much dip on their chip when it comes to playing with the LeBron lead Lakers. You just have to take a look back to the not-so-distant 2020 playoffs to see what happens when players of opposing teams decide to get a little too frisky.

Dillon Brooks deserves a history lesson on what happens when you smack-talk LeBron James and the Lakers.

2020 Round 1 vs Portland

The Portland Trail Blazers came into the bubble and were one of the best shooting teams that arrived. Damian Lillard basically won bubble MVP averaging 33 points per game, more than anyone else in Orlando at the time. Although the Lakers were the No. 1 seed, sports media nationwide was giving the Blazers more than a fighting chance of knocking off the King and his men.

In Game 1 we saw the Blazers beat the Lakers 100-93 in a game where Damian Lillard scored 34 points and LeBron scored a whopping 17 points. There was a point in the 4th quarter where Dame was clearly in the zone where he felt confident enough to begin dancing mid-game on the Lakers.

The next games went as follows:

• Game 2: Lakers 111 – Trail Blazers 88
• Game 3: Lakers 116 – Trail Blazers 108
• Game 4: Lakers 135 – Trail Blazers 115
• Game 5: Lakers 131 – Trail Blazers 122

LeBron went on to average 27.4 points per game for the remainder of the series and his right-hand man Anthony Davis averaged 29.8 points per game. Damian Lillard and the rest of the Portland Trail Blazers learned their lesson.

2020 Round 2 vs Houston:

The series following Portland came against the most current iteration of the Houston super-team experiment at the time which featured guards James Harden and Russell Westbrook. The series looked to be a good one that had the potential to go 6-7 games.

With James Harden being the best shooting guard in the league at the time, and Westbrook being far removed from the decline we’ve seen the past two seasons, the Rockets posed a real problem for the Lakers whose main strength for the majority of the season was their frontcourt, not their backcourt.

Game 1 took place, and in the process of the Rockets beating the Lakers 112-97, Russell Westbrook took it upon himself to let the entire (empty outside of families) arena know that he and his teammates were feeling themselves.

The next games went as follows:

• Game 2: Lakers 117 – Rockets 109
• Game 3: Lakers 112 – Rockets 102
• Game 4: Lakers 110 – Rockets 100
• Game 5: Lakers 119 – Rockets  96

LeBron went on to average 25.8 points per game for the remainder of the series, while Anthony Davis averaged 25.4 points per game. Russell Westbrook and the rest of the Houston Rockets learned their lesson.

2020 Round 3 vs Denver: 

This series was slightly different from the rest. With Jamal Murray lighting the league on fire in the bubble and Nikola Jokic reaching his MVP-caliber of play, the Lakers seemed to have their hands full. Through the first two games of the series, however, that did not seem to be the case.

The Lakers took the 2-0 lead, putting Denver in essentially a win-or-go-home type game. To come back from 3-0? Impossible. The Nuggets proceeded to save themselves for the time being and play a remarkable Game 3 where we saw Jamal Murray score 28 points, Jerami Grant score 26 and Jokic put up 22 points and 10 rebounds.

Happy to avoid going down 3-0, you would think that there would be a humble hardworking attitude ready to even the series up 2-2. Instead, what we got was Jamal Murray acting as if they had arrived. He took his time doing his best Steph Curry impression as he slowly shimmied all the way back down the court to the Nugget’s bench after hitting a dagger of a three.

The next games went as follows:

• Game 4: Lakers 114 – Nuggets 108
• Game 5: Lakers 117 – Nuggets 107

LeBron went on to average 27 points per game for the series including an absolute masterclass close-out game where he tallied up an astounding 38 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists. Anthony Davis also did his thing and averaged 31.2 points per game. Jamal Murray and the rest of the Denver Nuggets learned their lesson.

2020 NBA Finals vs Miami:

The long and extra strenuous journey of months spent in the bubble, scratching and clawing for the ultimate prize, finally had a light at the end of the tunnel. The Lakers were set to square off against the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals with fantastic storylines throughout.

It was LeBron vs his old squad in Miami, it was the Laker legend Pat Riley facing off against the organization he helped so tremendously throughout the 80s, and it was two very good two-way players going at it in LeBron vs Jimmy Butler.

With Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragić both suffering injuries in Game 1, the Lakers quickly capitalized, winning the first two games to secure a 2-0 lead in the series. Game 3 resulted in a Miami Heat victory after Jimmy Butler put the team on his back on the way to 40 points, 11 rebounds and 13 assists.

After a performance for the ages like that, you’d assume that Butler would’ve been the one barking, yet it wasn’t. Game 3 brought us the infamous Tyler Herro snarl.

The next games went as follows:

• Game 4: Lakers 102 – Heat 96
• Game 5: Lakers 108 – Heat 111
• Game 6: Lakers 106 – Heat 93

Before I go into what LeBron and AD averaged for the remainder of the series, I’d like to direct your attention to a visual of what happens when you play stupid games with LeBron:

You win stupid prizes. Not sure if you could see Mr. Snarl hurled off-screen in the blink of an eye.  LeBron averaged 29.8 points, 11.8 rebounds and 8.5 assists per game with his running mate AD averaging 25 points and 10.7 rebounds per game en route to the Lakers’ first championship since Kobe lead the team to glory in 2010 against the Boston Celtics.

The latest installment:

Is it a guarantee that the Lakers are going to win the next three games and finish off the most disliked team in the NBA 4-1 just because Dillon Brooks ran his mouth? No. Should you absolutely hammer the over on whatever LeBron’s points are set at come Saturday? No.

Don’t for a second expect the highest-IQ player the game has ever seen to divert from his typical style of play because a 0-time all-star decided to talk crazy.

All I’m saying is that you just took an ultra-competitive all-time great athlete, and gave him more than enough to think about over the next three days. See you Saturday, Dillon.