Dillon Brooks has a new team, a new city, and the exact same list of NBA enemies he had a year ago. Ask him about the Suns’ upcoming schedule and he goes straight to one date: December 30 against the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James’ birthday.
Brooks made no effort to hide it. Asked which game he was most looking forward to, he named LeBron’s birthday game without a pause. He said he wants to be the reason LeBron does not enjoy turning 42.
This is the same Dillon Brooks who called LeBron overrated in 2023, got dominated by him in the first round, and then spent the last two years pretending that whole thing never happened. Except when reporters ask about it. Then he brings it up first.
Brooks was traded to Phoenix this offseason as part of the Suns’ reset around Devin Booker. He replaces some of the wing defense they lost when Bradley Beal moved on. He is a rotation player on a team that needs him to hit corner threes and pester ball handlers.
He is also the exact kind of chaos agent the Suns did not have last year. Phoenix played too soft, too clean, too polite. Brooks does not do polite. He talks. He grabs jerseys. He hits guys with elbows and then walks away like nothing happened. Suns fans are going to love him about as much as everyone else in the league hates him.
LeBron, for his part, does not need the extra motivation. He is 41 years old and still one of the ten best players in the world. He is not going to be baited into a fistfight with Dillon Brooks on national TV. He will probably drop 32 on him and refuse to say his name after the game.
That is what happened last time. Brooks talked. LeBron scored 40. Memphis went home. Brooks got traded within weeks. The pattern is well established.
Still, Brooks does not care. He thrives on being disliked. His entire NBA identity is built around it. He is not going to soften his edges to fit in with Devin Booker and Kevin Durant. If anything, he is going to test how much those two are willing to tolerate before the games actually start counting.
The Suns’ season starts in October. The LeBron birthday game does not come until late December. That is four months of Brooks reminding anyone with a microphone that he is not scared of the Lakers.
The Lakers do not need to say a word. They just need to win in Phoenix in November, then win again in Los Angeles on December 30, and watch Brooks pretend he never brought it up in the first place.
He always does.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
