Whether he is one or not, Phoenix Suns star Dillon Brooks continues to embrace his villain nickname, seemingly doing his best to instigate and disrupt his NBA opponents on and off the court.
With the Western Conference Finals underway, it features the league’s two-time Most Valuable Player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, leading the defending champions against a challenging San Antonio Spurs squad.
And whenever SGA is involved in games, there tends to be a discussion of him drawing a lot of foul calls from the officials and getting a helpful number of free throws.
That was the case throughout the regular season and in at least one of the Thunder’s playoff series, resulting in criticism of the Thunder star.
On Thursday, his opponent, Brooks, went viral by helping unveil “Unethical Hoops,” a game that recreates the classic board game “Operation” and features Gilgeous-Alexander as the character on the board rather than a medical patient.
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“What’s up, y’all? It’s the villain, and I’ve got something to reveal. Unethical Hoops,” Brooks said in a collab video with Underdog.
The NBA star opens up the very real game to reveal the clever concept: SGA in a Thunder uniform on the front, with various holes all over the board labeled.
Brooks points out the “Head Snap” spot near the top of SGA, indicating “a lot of people do that,” and then shows “Hook and Cook” near his shoulder, claiming that’s James Harden’s move.
Inside each labeled hole on the board is a small basketball, and the objective is to retrieve each ball using a small pair of metal tweezers with little hands, without triggering a buzzer for a foul.
“You know I don’t foul,” Brooks jokes in the video, then immediately gets one when trying out the game.
Brooks reveals that the game is available on UnethicalHoops.com, and fans can “get reacquainted with the new foul-baiting.” The website states that there will be only 100 editions of the game, given as prizes to lucky individuals who enter according to the on-site rules.
For the first eight games of the NBA Playoffs, SGA and the Thunder cruised right through their opponents, achieving four-game sweeps over the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers.
LeBron James and the Lakers weren’t too critical of the foul calls. However, the Phoenix Suns certainly were, including Brooks’ teammate, Devin Booker, who received a hefty fine from the league for ripping the officiating postgame.
Gilgeous-Alexander received a total of 49 free throws in the four games against the Suns and 34 in the four games against the Lakers.
The Western Conference Finals have been pretty even, thus far, with the San Antonio Spurs picking up a double-overtime win for Game 1, and OKC evening the series up with a 122-113 win in Game 2.
Officials called 21 fouls on each side in that second game, but OKC shot 24 free throws compared to 17 for the visitors.
Meanwhile, Brooks showed up to watch OKC in their second-round series against the Lakers, even chatting it up with SGA and his teammates after the win. Some took that as more of a sign that Brooks was intentionally trolling LeBron from a courtside seat, but he said he later revealed he wanted to watch the Thunder to see how they did.
And whether or not he really is the villain some say he is, he calls himself the nickname in Underdog’s video, so he’s clearly having some fun with the role.
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