Against all odds, something special is happening in Phoenix. The Suns began the season without a first-round draft pick, and with a roster stocked almost entirely with variously limited shooting guards, assorted castoffs, and for some reason the Charlotte Hornets' entire post-pandemic center rotation. These guys, most pundits would have said before quickly shuffling down the projected standings to previewing the race for the 14 seed, are perhaps the biggest bummer in the NBA. Wrong; the Suns are 13-9, playing hypermodern hoops and lodging themselves firmly in the playoff race. The player who typifies Phoenix's special season is Dillon Brooks.
Phoenix's most important player is still Devin Booker, who has made a big leap as a playmaker this season, though the guy most responsible for the stuff that Phoenix excels at is Brooks. The Canadian ass-kicker is enjoying the best statistical offensive season of his career, posting 22 points per game on slightly below-average shooting; in a season where Jalen Green has scarcely played and Grayson Allen's ankle sprain was a near-crisis, Brooks's willingness to take a bunch of shots and pull out his assortment of horrifically ugly one-on-one moves to make space matters a lot. But more than his scoring, it's Brooks's fight that is propelling his team.
Fighting has always been a particular skill of his. Lest we forget, Brooks is most famous for the events of the 2023 playoffs, when, as a member of the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies, the player nicknamed "Villain" spent their first-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers cartoonishly antagonizing LeBron James—including punching him in the balls—while also shooting 31 percent from the floor in a six-game elimination. The Grizzlies wanted no part in keeping him around after that, reportedly telling him ahead of the 2023 offseason they wouldn't bring him back "under any circumstances." On the one hand, Brooks had been a starter-level player who usually made up for anemic offensive output with ferocious on-ball defense; on the other, he seemed to be on an increasingly sharp vector into the Patrick Beverley Zone. The four-year, $86 million deal he then signed with the Houston Rockets was shocking, though I'd argue Brooks showed pretty quickly that he was worth the money by helping establish the culture of toughness Houston still enjoys today. As annoying as he was in his two years there, his leadership and willingness to beat people up were genuinely beneficial for a team in need of both.
And then he got traded, coming over to Phoenix alongside Green and the 2025 10th overall draft pick, which were both the far more prized assets in the deal that sent Kevin Durant to Houston. What could Brooks really be expected to do for the Suns, a team whose roster balance was all wrong, without the apparent talent level required to get the most out of someone with Brooks's skills and shortcomings? The same thing he did in Houston, it turns out.
The Suns are dedicated to applying pressure in every situation, which requires tremendous effort and grit, qualities Brooks has in abundance. "Defensively, I want to play aggressive," new coach Jordan Ott said in his introductory presser. "All-out effort all the time." That's exactly how the Suns play. They hound the ball 94 feet, they fly at the offensive glass, they fling the ball around on offense and toss up a ton of threes. Those are all tenets of the modern game, and all things Brooks is good at.
There's more to the team's success than Brooks, of course. Collin Gillespie, after being tossed off from a Denver Nuggets team in sore need of ball-handling, has seized the starting point guard job with his fearless shooting. Booker, who is now hurt, has bought in on defense and is passing it better than he ever has at the other end. The bigs are doing their job and Ott has a deep rotation of high-intensity players who can sustain Phoenix's pressure over 48 minutes. But Brooks is at the strategic center, running around on defense creating chaos.
The era of defenses sitting around waiting to react is over. The way to win now is to seize the initiative and dictate how the offense plays rather than the other way around. Phoenix doesn't have the talent of a team like Oklahoma City, though the Suns show that playing that way can still be effective, and they force turnovers at the second-best rate this season.
Brooks got his moment on Monday against his old foe LeBron James. The Suns kicked the shit out of the Lakers, 125-108, making James look old and Austin Reaves look overmatched. The deformative effects of Phoenix's pressure were riddled throughout the box score: 21 L.A. turnovers and 16 Phoenix steals; one shot attempt in 23 minutes for Rui Hachimura; zero rebounds, steals, or blocks for James, for the first time in his career. In the middle of the cyclone stood Brooks, racking up 33 points and once again talking crazy shit to LeBron.
"Sometimes, I'm trying to tell him to chill out, but I think he just blacks out," said Gillespie, whom Brooks has dubbed Villain Jr. "He's fearless. Doesn't back down from anybody, and he will go toe-to-toe with anybody." In this case, "anybody" included several courtside fans, with whom Brooks was jawing while scoring 15 second-quarter points, and James himself, of whom Brooks said after the game, "He likes people that bow down. I don't bow down."
I guess Brooks will just be like this forever, which is probably very annoying for most people to deal with but is also clearly effective as an engine for winning basketball games. In a sense, the evolution of the game has caught up with the way Brooks has always liked to play. It's an unlikely redemption for a guy whose first pro team told him to kick rocks, which must feel amazing.
