You think you want an active trade deadline. You want everyone down in the shit, firing players and draft picks back and forth at subatomic speeds. That's what you tell yourself! And then one February everyone goes crazy in the Deal Zone and there are one billion trades in one week, so many coming so rapidly that the league's preeminent scoopster isn't even waiting to learn both halves of trades before posting them and moving to the next one. Before you have time to fully wrap your head around one perplexing deal, 14 more have followed in its wake. All I wanted was a little action to pull me out of seasonal malaise, you sob, desperate to force the genie back into the bottle. Just like that, and too late, you remember that what you want from a basketball season, more than anything, is some by-God basketball.
They played some by-God basketball in Minneapolis Thursday night. The two participating teams were among the least active at the deadline. The Timberwolves, sitting sixth in the Western Conference standings with one of the most expensive active rosters in the NBA, were severely restricted by the current CBA and made zero moves. The visiting Houston Rockets kept their roster intact but acquired 32-year-old Cody Zeller to fill the very last seat on their bench, and otherwise picked up a few future second-round draft picks. The teams are good enough and young enough to justify standing pat, and to feel reasonably confident headed into the closing stretch of the regular season.
Because these teams were neither gutted by last-minute trades nor feeling out recently reshaped rotations, the basketball was more intense and quite a bit chippier than a lot of what is typically played on deadline day. In the second quarter, with the Rockets leading by three points, Anthony Edwards pushed the ball in semi-transition to the right side of the court, hounded by Dillon Brooks. The Rockets were out of defensive shape, with Tari Eason cross-matched on Rudy Gobert. It looked like Edwards wanted a quick screen to force a switch, but Gobert pivoted into the paint and Edwards pulled back on his dribble, as if to reset. Brooks closed down the space and, because he is a pest and also a goon, reached too aggressively and smashed his wet underarm into Edwards's face. Edwards went to the floor, the whistle was blown, Brooks woofed, and the two players chirped back and forth. Brooks was still talking during the ensuing play, then got handsy; when play went back the other way, he and Edwards tangled their limbs and required separation.
Both players were assessed common fouls. When play resumed, Brooks cut across the floor and attempted to draw a cheap whistle on Wolves rookie Terrence Shannon Jr. Delightfully, Brooks was whistled for a flopping violation, and had to spend a few moments thudding around sulkily in a condition of exposed busterdom.
Brooks had a hand in holding Edwards to four points on eight shots in the third quarter, and the Rockets had a six-point lead headed into the final frame. But Edwards got hot again and led Minnesota on a 22–8 closing run, highlighted by a very sick play where he split a trap, absorbed a blow from Brooks's chest in the paint, and dropped in a tough banked and-one bucket, then stared at Brooks from the floor.
At the buzzer, Edwards, one of the league's really relentless shit-talkers, made a big show of pointing at Brooks from mid-court and laughing. In his on-court post-game interview, Edwards said "Hell yeah" three times in answer to the question of whether the back-and-forth with Brooks fueled his performance. He had more to say about Brooks from the locker room:
The Rockets, presently mired in a five-game losing streak, are really good, and Brooks knows what his role is on an NBA floor, however much whining he might do about it after the fact. Edwards's 41 points will not convince Brooks to change his ways! This is just your regular reminder that nobody much likes Dillon Brooks, and that his peers take particular joy from making him look bad.
