Despite everything that happened after Dillon Brooks trash talked LeBron James in the playoffs last season, he doesn’t regret a thing.
“No, I still feel the same way,” Brooks told FOX Sports ahead of the Lakers and Rockets matchup on Sunday.
In their last matchup earlier this month, the Rockets embarrassed the Lakers 128-94, a game which many counted as a big W for Brooks over LeBron.
When Brooks is guarding someone like LeBron with a hugely impressive resume, he explains how he adapts the mentality that he can guard anyone.
“Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel,” The Rockets forward said. “I wouldn’t be in this position if I wasn’t like that. People wouldn’t want me on their team if I wasn’t like that. It’s better for me. It gets me going every single day to play the best of the best.”
Since all the drama and trash talk from the Lakers-Grizzlies playoffs series, which included Brooks being traded to Houston, being fined and ultimately getting schooled by LeBron, he has become the villain of the NBA.
Which begs the question, was the villain role something that Brooks was striving for all along?
“It was given to me,” Brooks said. “But I embraced it. It strikes fear into people. When I start getting consecutive stops, they start putting their head down and pouting. It’s just a mantra. Whoever looks into it on social media, they’re already losing. I just play along with it and keep playing basketball.”
LeBron recently took the high road and gave Brooks a compliment, explaining how he’s “put in the work since he came out of Oregon” and was deserving of the contract he got with the Rockets.
But the two definitely aren’t friends.
“No, I don’t talk to him,” Brooks said of James. “I don’t talk to anybody, except for my people.”