Source: https://www.si.com/nba/2023/11/16/dillon-brooks-villain-rockets-daily-cover
Brooks wants to clarify something. The criticism did bother him. For a while, anyway. Days after the Grizzlies’ season ended, Brooks tumbled down a social media rabbit hole. He read the comments on Instagram. On X, formerly known as Twitter, he scrolled through the replies. He saw everything. Machine Gun Kelly dropping his name in a freestyle (“Come back like LeBron and drop 40 on you like I should”). James, quoting Jay-Z lyrics, dissing him. (“Unlike you little I’m a grown ass man.”) Anonymous followers burying him. “LA Fitness Draymond,” one wrote. “Tired wrestling heel,” posted another. Suggestions that Brooks’s next stop would be in China briefly had the Shanghai Sharks trending. “That’s when I realized how big the Lakers were, how big LeBron James is,” says Brooks. He shrugs. “It’s part of my life. It’s going to make me a better player.”
Brooks hoped Memphis would support him. Instead, the franchise cut him loose. At a season-ending press conference, Grizzlies GM Zach Kleiman declined to address Brooks’s future. Days later, The Athletic reported the team informed Brooks he wouldn’t be back “under any circumstances.” In March, Memphis coach Taylor Jenkins had called Brooks the player who “epitomizes” the program. By May, that program wanted him gone. “What I didn’t like about Memphis was they allowed that so they can get out of the woodwork, and then I’m the scapegoat of it all,” says Brooks. “That’s what I didn’t appreciate. And then ultimately they’ll come to me on the low, as men, one on one and tell me something, but then not defend me when everything went down.”
In Houston, team officials watched with interest. For months, the Rockets had studied Brooks. They needed defenders. The Grizzlies finished in the top six in efficiency in each of the last three seasons, with Brooks regularly guarding opposing teams’ top perimeter players. They needed veterans. Winning veterans, preferably. Memphis made the playoffs in each of the last three seasons. The swagger, the confidence, the attitude? Houston, with win totals in recent years that looked like locker combinations, desired that, too. “Fundamentally, we want the player we saw in Memphis,” says Rockets GM Rafael Stone. “The aggression, the competitiveness, the willingness to do whatever it takes. That’s what’s attractive to us.”
Dillon Brooks redemption arc is fascinating and could not have been written any better than is currently playing out with the 6-3 Rockets and 2-9 Grizz.
The man took all the criticism and hate and worked on it quietly.
I’ll be the first to admit I thought dude was an absolute clown and absolutely hated the signing as a Rockets fan. But he has taken all the remarks about him not being an efficient scorer and flipped it completely on its head. On the defensive end he is the spark plug that gets the entire team going. If you didn’t watch Rockets basketball last year it was just a bunch of highly skilled offensive players who looked to be a high flying exciting team that put up points, and at times the quickest way to get the ball back was slack on defensive.
The way Dillon locks in on defense each time down the court makes the whole team excel, its a difference you can see in the box score AND on film. He is a big time difference maker and one of the pick ups of the season.