The incident in which Rockets guard Sterling Brown was assaulted in Miami was more serious than first reported and could get several players in trouble for violating the league’s health and safety protocols, The Athletic’s Kelly Iko and Shams Charania report. Brown was beaten up by several assailants and was hit over the head with a bottle, leaving him woozy. The assault occurred after Brown after he entered the wrong “sprinter van” while exiting a strip club.
Brown required stitching in multiple areas for his facial injuries and underwent several tests. The team initially feared he might be in critical condition.
Five or more Rockets went to the strip club early Monday, which would violate NBA protocols that prohibit players from going to bars, lounges or clubs. The league has opened up an investigation into the incident.
There’s more on the Rockets:
- Kevin Porter Jr. stepped in to protect Brown during the incident and suffered minor injuries, Charania tweets. Porter won’t be able to play until Sunday, as he has been placed on the NBA’s health and safety protocols list.
- The altercation is the latest off-court distraction that first-year coach Stephen Silas has dealt with this season. He says it comes with the territory, Mark Berman of Fox 26 tweets. “I’m dealing as well as I can,” he said. “It’s not an easy situation, but that’s the job. That’s what I’m here for. My job is to lead us through these choppy waters.”
- There’s still no timetable for Danuel House‘s return from a sprained right ankle, Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle writes. He suffered the injury on April 5. “We’re doing a good job of rehabbing and taking our time and making sure it is handled in the right way,” House said. “The medical staff hasn’t really given me a precise date. I’m just going by rehabilitation and movements day-by-day until they give me the OK.”
After House got in trouble last year and was banished from the bubble, it would seem fair to assume he was one of the other teammates there. He and Brown were already out with injuries, so it makes no difference if they were placed in health and safety protocols as well. They do have 4 other injured players so only 10 guys dressed for tonight’s game. If more than one or two of those 10 were involved, then they won’t have the minimum number of players required to play on Friday.
You gotta thank harden for setting the example for younger players. When your “star” player does things like what harden did, trying to get traded, that trickles down to everyone in the team. What a role model
Harden was at stop clubs in Houston all the time. He’s well known in the night life there. I got family in Houston.
Looked up the area where that place is, and it’s a worse area than I was wondering about
Bring back james harden
You can replace him if the Rockets get the #1 overall pick. Sorry about the Suggs jersey avatar but I’d be happy with either you, him, or Mobley.
Sorry but the #1 pick ain’t gonna help the franchise for a long time. Enjoy being a lotto team for the next five years or so
Considering this is just the 9th time Houston will participate in the draft lottery since it began 36 years ago, which means there’s only a 25% chance they will be part of it again next year. So there’s roughly a .1% chance of them being in the lottery for the next 5 years.
I am sorry that Brown was injured so badly, but that was an easily avoided incident. Just stop going to clubs at 3 AM. Nothing good happens in public at 3 AM. Nothing. Sure it might be fun, but so is surfing on the top of a moving vehicle. Not exactly the smartest or safest thing to do though.
I’m an owner . I don’t want my players going out drinking during the season. I don’t care if we are the worse team. This is why you love stars like Kobe n Bron. Who take care of their bodies and careers. And do all they can to get most out of it. It’s only a 12-15 yr career if your lucky. Why mess with that. I know you are only young once. But I can can do plenty of partying after 30-35. I’m not going to blow my athletic career. I’d void all their contracts. If was the owner. Porter is already being watched. And he’s out doing this. Rockets are pathetic
There is a big problem with your thought there. The owners just don’t get to void contracts as punitive measure unless the contracts were explicitly broken. And I doubt very seriously if you would be able to sign any player if such language were included. I know I wouldn’t sign it, even if I had no intention of drinking and partying.
Professional athletes going out drinking and partying? Perish the thought.
It’s almost like they’re young guys with tons of money..
Exactly Curtis. Could be the reason why Brown was banged up? I know more so in the past than today, but these guys would occasionally carry a lot of cash. I remember reading about Gary Payton I think it was in the 80s he got mugged in Oakland and he had $100,000 on him or something crazy like that.
The article here says Brown got into the wrong van so maybe it was just something like miscommunication and not mugging of a couple of professional athletes who might have cash on them or jewelry??
I’d like to think that Kevin Porter Jr. was scared straight when Cleveland couldn’t find a taker for him (at least for a little while), but evidently that “almost-not-being-in-the-nba” episode didn’t keep him from going to the club.
To be young and dumb and on an NBA contract…lord knows how stupid I could have been. Here’s to hoping that kid learns something this time.
What you said makes a lot of sense. I tend to be fairly judgmental of these guys, but I am doing it from a 40-something’s point of view. It is sometimes easy to forget that I was not exactly a saint when I was in my early 20s and all I had was a McDonald’s salary, not an NBA salary. So God only knows how bad I would have been with all that money on top of my poor decision making as well.
Yes Jason to you and me we can see what lies ahead in a successful NBA career. But a young guy sometimes even just seeing that minimum contract a million or less is huge, huge money. They can’t see sometimes they could make ten times that if they do it right. Heck when I was young 100k was a lot of money and these guys are getting it every week or month or so on minimum salaries. As I would be, they’re on top of the world and can’t see that two or three years from then there would be even more coming in.
First and foremost I hope Sterling Brown has a quick and full recovery. As far as the Rocket organization goes is there another sports franchise that is a bigger joke. Due to COVID restrictions players are not supposed to go out. And if they truly cared about each other and their performance on the court they wouldn’t. Rocket fans can hope and pray for the first pick but unless it’s Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant or Lebron James it’s gonna be a long slow climb back to the playoffs. Nothing gives me more pleasure than knowing that the Lakers left this franchise in flames
Didn’t Brown have a incident in Milwaukee where he got assaulted by a police officer and they settled with him?
Could HR start a strip club glossary? I’m up on make it rain but no clue about “sprinter van”
A very large Mercedes, popular for cargo, hotel transit, or showing off your wealth.