Dillon Brooks‘ first game with the Houston Rockets proved a costly one.
The NBA on Thursday fined Brooks $25,000 for “recklessly making contact” with Indiana Pacers center Daniel Theis in the groin area on Tuesday, leading to his ejection in the preseason matchup.
Brooks was tossed 4:33 into his first game with the Rockets, with whom he signed with as a free agent this offseason, for the flagrant foul 2 on Theis.
Brooks said after the Rockets’ win that he didn’t mean to strike Theis and chalked the ejection up to his reputation.
“I tried to navigate a screen,” Brooks said, according to the Houston Chronicle. “I might have tapped him below waist. But he got right back up. I don’t know. It’s weird that every time it happens to me, I get picked on. I guess it’s part of reputation.
“For a flagrant 2 foul like that, you got to know if a person is doing it on purpose or intention. That’s really going at who I am as a person. That ref, Mitch [Ervin] , that just shows that he just doesn’t know who I am as a person. He’s just going off what’s been said.”