Dillon Brooks Ejected for Kicking Jamal Murray in Groin in Suns' NBA Cup Loss

Dillon Brooks was having his best night of the season, and then he kicked Jamal Murray in the groin. The Phoenix Suns forward was ejected from Friday night’s NBA Cup opener against Denver after officials reviewed a third-quarter jump shot, decided the kicked-out leg was overt rather than incidental, and upgraded an offensive foul to a flagrant 2. Brooks left with a season-high 22 points, Denver won 127-120, and the Suns lost a winnable Cup game and their leading scorer in the same sequence.

What exactly happened on the play?

A turnaround jumper that turned into a review. AP via theScore reports Brooks attempted the shot in the third quarter with Murray guarding him, fell backward as he shot, and kicked his right leg forward into Murray’s groin area. Murray went down in pain for a few moments, then got up and stayed in the game, which matters for how the play is judged: the contact was real enough to drop him, but not serious enough to take him out. The first call on the floor was an offensive foul on Brooks, and that would have been the end of it if the officials had not gone to the monitor.

The review changed everything. Lead official Tyler Ford announced over the public address system that Brooks had overtly kicked out his leg, the Arizona Republic reports, and the foul was upgraded to a flagrant 2. That wording is the whole case: a flagrant 2 is not just hard contact, it is contact judged unnecessary and excessive, and it carries an automatic ejection. Brooks was gone with 8:05 remaining in the third quarter, and the Suns were down 84-76 at the time, Reuters reports. Fans watching the clip at home split immediately, with some arguing the leg kick is part of Brooks’s shooting motion and others saying the review got it exactly right, but the officials’ word, overt, is what the record will carry.

Why does the Canada connection make this stranger?

Because these two are not rivals, they are national-team team-mates. The Arizona Republic notes both Brooks and Murray are Canadian and play together for Canada, which turns a normal flagrant foul into a locker-room story for two different teams. Murray, for his part, did not let the incident slow him down, and that is the next part of the story.

How did Denver close the game out?

With the man Brooks kicked leading the way. Murray finished with 39 points and seven three-pointers, Reuters reports, including 28 in the second half, and he was the reason Denver’s lead survived Phoenix’s late push. Christian Braun added 29 points with a career-high seven three-pointers, Nikola Jokic had 18 points and 10 assists, and the Nuggets shot 20 of 38 from three-point range as a team.

Phoenix’s rally is the part of the game that gets lost behind the ejection clip. Miles Bridges scored 24 points with 10 rebounds, Devin Booker added 20 on his 30th birthday, and the Suns used a 7-0 run to pull within 123-117 with 35.4 seconds left before Murray’s free throws closed it out. The Suns have now lost three of their first four games, Reuters notes, and they did it on a night when their leading scorer was ejected in the third quarter and their birthday star shot 7 of 19. The ejection did not decide the game, but it removed the one Phoenix player who was actually cooking, and that is a different kind of damage.

Why does Brooks’s history matter here?

Because the league office does not read a Dillon Brooks kick in isolation. The Arizona Republic reports Brooks had already picked up a flagrant 1 and an unnecessary contact foul in Monday’s loss at Oklahoma City, and that he led the NBA in technical fouls last season with 17. None of that makes Friday’s kick intentional by itself, and the officials ruled on the play, not the reputation. But reputation is why the review felt inevitable: when a player with that record kicks a leg out on a jump shot, officials are going to look at it twice, and the second look is where flagrant 2 lives.

Brooks has been here before, in a different uniform and a different month. Less than five minutes into the Suns-Pistons preseason opener in Detroit, Brooks and John Collins had to be separated after a scuffle that ended with a technical for Brooks and a flagrant 1 for Collins. That was October 5, and it set the tone for a season in which Brooks’s physical edge keeps crossing the line the officials draw. The same week produced other viral NBA moments, from Rudy Gobert dismissing the bench clip with LaMelo Ball and Jonathan Kuminga to the Clippers host clearing the air over a hot-mic clip, but Brooks’s ejection is different from both: it was not a misunderstanding to clear up, it was a call the officials made after watching it again. And in a week when Naji Marshall broke a rim and a chair at a Mavericks practice in Macao, the league’s physical-incident file is getting crowded early.

What happens next?

Three things, in order. First, the league office: the Arizona Republic reports Brooks will be fined a minimum of $2,000 because the incident is reported to the league, and any further discipline would come from that review. Second, the comments: neither Brooks nor Murray has been reported commenting on the play yet, and the first word from either man will set whether this stays a basketball call or becomes a feud. Third, the schedule: Phoenix next plays at Golden State on Monday, November 2, and the Suns’ NBA Cup group play resumes on November 20 in Salt Lake City. Brooks will be watched in both, not because one kick defines a player, but because a player who led the league in technicals last season, picked up a flagrant 1 on Monday, and got ejected for a kick on Friday is building a file, and files have a way of deciding the next call before the play even happens.