The Memphis Grizzlies and Dillon Brooks are parting ways after six seasons. It was reported by Shams Charania via Twitter and the Athletic, and the phrasing used was brutal – that Brooks would not be brought back “under any circumstances.”
But don’t be so quick to retcon the Dillon Brooks era.
Suddenly the criticism of Brooks, which had been coming from all angles for his antics during the first round of the playoffs against the Los Angeles Lakers, has been turned on to the franchise itself for throwing Brooks under the bus.
Winning cures everything, and when Brooks was helping the Grizzlies win, his antics off and on the court could be tolerated. Now he’s not, and they aren’t. This isn’t rocket science.
The internet did provide some humor to the situation, and it’s fun to get those jokes off, but when it comes down to it, Dillon Brooks made the Grizzlies a better team for much longer than he didn’t.
The writing has been on the wall for a while, and anyone who claims to be surprised by this outcome is either lying or living under a rock. And blaming the culture in Memphis and claiming Brooks is being made a scapegoat diminishes the actual basketball reasons the team is correctly moving on from him. He had become a liability on the offensive end, and Coach Jenkins either couldn’t or wouldn’t rein him in.
For all the noise surrounding the Grizzlies and Dillon Brooks, it would be helpful to remember that this team would not be where they are today without his efforts.
It’s okay to think his outsized trash-talking and at times reckless style of play would have been a detriment to the team going forward and appreciate the hard work and effort he’s shown this franchise for the past six seasons. We can and should do both.
When Dillon was drafted in 2017, the team was wildly different from the Grizzlies of the present day. During the 2017-18 season, the Grizzlies had a total of 24 players who played minutes for them, including such memorable players as Andrew Harrison, Jarell Martin, Ivan Rabb, and (who could forget?) Chandler Parsons. The Grizzlies went through a sudden head-coaching change and finished 14th in the western conference with a 22-60 record. Marc Gasol was still the leader of the team, and Mike Conley was the theoretical co-captain, although he was recovering from injury most of the season. The team Brooks was drafted by is unrecognizable now.
I still remember one of Brooks’ first games in a Memphis Grizzlies uniform. It was a preseason game against the New Orleans Pelicans, and he shot 5 for 5 from beyond the arc, during a period the team was notoriously lacking in outside shooting. In his rookie season, he played 2,350 minutes across all 82 regular season games, and the most total minutes of his career to date.
You will be hard-pressed to find a player who gives 110% effort in every game, but Brooks does. He always wants the toughest defensive assignments, and he prides himself in holding opponents to low-scoring numbers when they face him. He is a genuine asset on the defensive end … most of the time.
But that Dillon Brooks is also the same player who never met a shot he didn’t like, who led the league two years in a row in fouls accumulated, who regularly shoots ill-advised three-point shots only a few seconds into the shot clock. And sometimes, that was exactly what the Grizzlies needed, but that time has passed. As we all must grow and change and adapt, so too does this team.
The Grizzlies have outgrown Dillon Brooks, and that’s okay.
