Rockets deal for Dillon Brooks (4 yrs/$86 million + incentives)

Probably because he fouls a lot, which is the worst thing you can on a possession, and has really low bball iq. Even if in a vacuum he’s a solid 1 on 1 guy, the overall impact to the team is negative

 

It was a joke, take it easy.

 

Ugh this contract is gross. I understand any good player is not going to sign or force a trade here without overpaying and the FVV signing actual looks better the more I dwell on it, but really hard to justify this.

 

He’s around 3.3 fouls per game which isn’t too bad but yeah it’s not great

 

Udoka is getting a lot of trust from the Rockets organization, I’ll tell you that. How do you reward defense only with 4 years and 80 million?!

 

You guys think you hate this now - imagine how much you are going to hate it when we have to watch some guy like Tari Eason walk out the door because we don’t want to pay the luxury tax and are stuck with Brooks on the roster.

 

This is why we signed him!

And his offensive highlights are the reason, why many people may be worried - he has no business taking about 70% of the shots in this highlight reel right here:

 

Team got better. At what cost? I dont care i dont pay the bills. Werent any better players available. We were worst in perimeter defense now we have 2 of better or even elite in Brooks perimeter defenders. Dog mentality. This team doesn need shiny stars from FA. We need that from Jalen, Sengun, KPJ, Amen and Cam. Those where we supposed to get stars from. From FA we were supposed to get best vets and defenders. Brook Lopez stings a lot would be perfect. I expect FO to trade for defensive center because we have none on our whole roster

 

I don’t love this deal but Im guessing they see some upside with better coaching - I think it was obvious there was limited discipline in Memphis last year. If Ime can give Brooks a clearly defined offensive role and if Brooks can get to league average as a shooter(not as far away as you would think because shot selection is what kills his percentages), he easily becomes a movable contract in the new CBA because he is already and all nba defensive talent. He just has to embrace the title 3 and d and not worry about trying to create offense like he did in Memphis - we got guys who can create offense in broken sets. It’s not pretty but it’s better than having him set the table …but we DONT have a defensive mindset so he has to show that hustle to guys like Thompson, Tari, Bari, etc

 

I'm going to spare you the 10-paragraph "WHO THE F*CK WERE WE BIDDING AGAINST HIGHER THAN $12.4M???" rant because I'm sure someone's done it.

I've done my ritual with every new Rocket but I have to say... this time it feels really tough. Here we go anyway:

Well, he's a Rocket now. So from today he already has 100% of my respect and support, and he can only lose it from here. I really want him to flourish and have his best season ever, so I'll be a part of the solution instead of assuming resistance is needed.

Good luck to Brooks and Ime.

 

I suspect that there's some kind of Reclamation Award somewhere they so aspire to win. LOL. This FO was obsessed with reclaiming headcase KPJ. Now they appear to be obsessed with another headcase in Dillon Brooks.

 

Grizzly fan on Brooks' game. Thought this was interesting, didn't know if posted.

 

Retweets Postings are not endorsements. I do not endorse.



One of two things happened:

1. The Rockets agreed to a handshake deal with Brooks’ camp that if Lopez didn’t work out, they would repay them for taking the risk of having the market dry up on them. If Houston asked Brooks’ camp to wait until Lopez made his decision, it would 100% be fair for them to ask for an incentive ahead of time.

2. There wasn’t a handshake agreement, but Brooks’ camp wisely leveraged their position after the Lopez signing to squeeze more out of Houston. The Rockets begrudgingly caved because they don't view $20 million annually as a bad deal for Brooks.

…

Players like that cost a fair bit of money. As a point of reference, here are the annual numbers for some other starting caliber wings around the NBA that shoot near the same career three-point percentage as Brooks (34.2%):

R.J. Barrett - $26.8 million (career 34.3% three-point shooter)
Andrew Wiggins - $27.3 million (career 35.4% three-point shooter)
De’Andre Hunter - $22.5 million (career 35.6% three-point shooter)
Caris LeVert - $16.0 million (career 34.4% three-point shooter)

Some of these players offer more offensively than Brooks, but defensively he’s a step ahead of all these guys.

This has been said before, but that doesn’t make it any less true: $20 million/year is not the same as it was 10 years ago. For example, in 2014-15, the Houston Rockets agreed to to pay Trevor Ariza an average annual salary of $8 million. You may be saying to yourself, “Cool. Brooks is getting $12 million more per year. What’s your point?” The salary cap in 2014-15 was $63 million. This year, it’s $136 million.

Percentage of the cap:

Trevor Ariza contract in 2014-15: 12.7%
Dillon Brooks contract in 2023-24: 14.7%

It’s not 2014-15 anymore. We need to stop thinking about annual contract numbers in those terms. The Rockets essentially paid a 2% “bad team tax” to get Brooks to Houston. And ultimately, that’s perfectly fine.

To be clear, I’m not comparing Brooks to Ariza as players. For a number of reasons, they’re totally different players. Ariza is just an easy example that Rockets fans will remember of a starting caliber wing player from the past who was thought to be on a reasonable contract.

People need to calm down. This Dillon Brooks contract is fine.

 

Just because someone proclaims Brooks to be a starting caliber wing worthy of the money over and over doesn’t make it true.

 

We would have been better off just playing KJ instead. Let Ime teach him some defense. KJ is unquestionably the superior player.

 

Likewise, the opposite is true.

It's an overpay until proven otherwise on the court. I think there is a decent possibility that a defensive minded coach can get more out a player who also needed a change of scenery.

 

The best plausible scenario is where Ime get Brooks to become someone who is talked about in defensive player of the year (maybe wins it once in 4 years but is usually in the conversation) and he's a below average offensive player with less FGA.

 

In before someone says "copium"

 

Not buying this fully, but I do think we should talk about players' salaries in terms of the percentage of the cap. That makes more sense, especially when the word "max" gets thrown around because "max" is different money for different guys.