Why Miles Bridges understands Dillon Brooks’ ejection vs Nuggets

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Why Miles Bridges understands Dillon Brooks’ ejection vs Nuggets

Originally posted on NBA on ClutchPoints
By Hayden Cilley, ClutchPoints | Last updated Oct 31, 2026 12:33 PM ET

The moment Dillon Brooks was ejected from the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets Friday showdown, everything changed. And Miles Bridges saw that firsthand.

There aren’t many who duplicate Brooks’s intensity, but it wasn’t necessarily that attribute that the team missed. It was his scoring and efficiency.

Before being assessed a flagrant foul penalty two against Jamal Murray, he had 22 points in 21 minutes. He shot an absurd 75% from the field on 12 shots. He also happened to be the team’s second-highest scorer despite the ejection.

The flagrant foul was the right call, by legal definition. However, Bridges sees that perhaps Brooks’s reputation might’ve been why the officials were quick to call an abrupt end to his night.

“I feel like if there was anybody else but Dillon doing that, he wouldn’t have got ejected, but you know, he has a name in this league,” he explained in the locker room postgame.

“He’s the villain of this league, and that comes with a price, but we definitely needed him today.”

Dillon Brooks’s ejection raises question marks from the Suns

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The question marks? More or less what was leading up to it. Both Brooks and Murray were playing extremely physical, but there’s a history there.

The two men are Canadian National Team teammates. They’ve competed against and with each other for years, whether in the NBA or outside the league.

That being said, there will be an uptick in physicality. Before the flagrant foul, there wasn’t anything too excessive or egregious from either guy.

All that Jordan Ott hopes is that reputation didn’t play a factor in the ejection.

“We’ll see if we can find another flagrant two in that play around the league,” he said. “I hope reputation doesn’t play into that, but they were just competitive guys going at it like they probably had for ten years.

“Just unfortunate that we get the short end of the stick on some of that.”

This article first appeared on NBA on ClutchPoints and was syndicated with permission.

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