Dillon Brooks' Mid-Career Crisis (Scoring Points) Appreciation Blog
Ronald Cortes. Getty Images.We all have that point in our career when things get stale and we just have to try something new. Some of us change industries entirely. Some learn statistical programming and get a part-time hobby job blogging about dumb sports stats. But for Dillon Brooks, he's chosen something radical in his ninth-year in the workforce.
He's decided to score points. Effectively - being good at his job.
For all my fellow NBA casuals out looking for a hero - or anti-hero - worthy of rooting for. I'm here to tell you. It's Dillon Brooks. This guy has been lights out this year seemingly out of nowhere. Not that he was some awful player before. But the world pretty much only knew him as the guy that talked too much shit in the playoffs before losing to the Lakers in the first round of the 2022-23 Playoffs.
And you know what? Dillon learned his lesson. They say don't talk shit if you can't back it up. So Dillon chose the harder path. He started backing it up. Took a couple teams to get there, but he's been all over LeBron every opportunity he's had.
You likely recall the hissy fit LeBron threw a few weeks back when he literally pulled a referee while screaming at him and somehow didn't get kicked out as the NBA rulebook mandates with zero exceptions or clause allowing for interpretation. And for a league that caters to the pre-eminent narcissist of the sport (All Star game selection is laughable), it's really nice for guys like me who have severe love/hate issues with the NBA to see a guy like Dillon Brooks give zero fucks. He might not be the best player ever on the court. Too big to move like SGA, too small to break into pieces like Embiid, Brooks has a 90s style attitude who gives it his all without giving a shit who he upsets wearing another color jersey.
I love it.
Having played LA three times, Brooks is averaging 25.3 PPG against LA and 20.6 vs all other teams. And funny enough, he's much lower in the other basic stats. Just one rebound per game against LA vs about 4 in non-Laker games. Only .6 assists vs the Lakers and 1.9 otherwise, and slightly up on fouls (3.6 vs LA, 3.3 all else). Three game sample size here is obviously hard to make anything of, but it's fun to think he's used this anti-Bron energy to focus all his efforts on scoring. And maybe an extra foul or so.
I don't know if Brooks got this extra boost from his LeBron hate, but it's pretty wild the transformation he's making. After not being able to find it with two teams, he's kind of pulling a Sam Darnold and making those franchises look pretty bad letting him walk out the door.
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Let's have a little fun here. If Brooks is able to hold his 20-PPG average (21 right now), would nine years be the longest it ever took a player to average 20-points a game? Turns out, no. Many others before him also went on mid-career crises of their own where they decided to stop being a non-player character and make things a little bit more about them.
Speaking of Dillon all the sudden scoring points, he just put up his first career 40-point game the other night. This got me thinking about another dumb stat lookup. What is the record for games played before scoring 40-points? You'd think you either got that in you or you don't. I mean, it took Cooper Flagg 26 games. 65 for Wemby. 17 for Jordan. Want to know how many it took Wilt? Ready for this? One. One game.
It took Dillon Brooks 1,155 games.
Oh - not a record either by the way. Shout out Andre Miller. Here's the full list of all those that took as long or longer than Dillon Brooks. Just another dumb stat you can get here from this career crisised blogger and probably nowhere else.
Not exactly a barn burning list of names here. Gary Payton. Tony Parker. James Worthy. Yeah…
Shout out Lenny Wilkens though for knowing if he's going to be a great coach one day, he'll need to be able to tell the young whipper snappers he scored 40 at least once.
Looking forward to watching the Suns play the Lakers again on February 26. As a pure basketball casual fan who would love to root for the Bulls but is in full-on boycott Jerry Reinsdorf mode, I have the Suns as the 1.1 for teams I'm ready to bandwagon for the rest of the season. They meet most of my criteria I set out a couple months back:
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1. Can't be an amazing team (no bandwagons)
2. Must prioritize defense
3. Gives some sort of 90s vibes (Suns throwback court/graphics, have an enforcer, etc.)
4. No perennial floppers
They are 28th in defense. That's the only real con.
Anyway - we need more guys like Dillon Brooks who genuinely despise their opponents and aren't afraid to get feisty, or simply troll. I haven't seen troll game on the court like this since Dennis Rodman, and I'm all here for it.
Cheers to Dillon Brooks and his mid-career crisis.
Bonus reading for all my NBA casuals who missed the LeBron hissy fit.