New city. Same energy. That sums up the attitude of Houston Rockets forward Dillon Brooks. His team takes on the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday night, meaning the All-Defensive player will be matched up on LeBron James. The last time Brooks chirped at Bron it didn’t go well, but he remains undeterred.
“Ready to lock him up,” Brooks said Tuesday, according to The Houston Chronicle. “He’s shooting the ball well. He’s been playing well. So I’m just there to make him tired, make him get into that fourth quarter early.”
Brooks Still Talking That Talk
Last season during the playoffs when Brooks was a member of the Memphis Grizzlies, he said “I poke bears” in reference to trash-talking Bron. He also called the four-time MVP “old.” The Lakers beat the Grizzlies in six games and Brooks had a terrible offensive series.
For some, that would have been enough of an experience to tone down this type of rhetoric. But not Brooks.
To guard the best player on the opposing team night in and night out takes a certain kind of mentality. You must be unfazed when you get scored on or embarrassed. You have to remain disciplined and keep executing the game plan.
When you are the primary defender of an elite player, it’s not about shutting out that player. You won’t be able to do that. Your job is to make it difficult for that elite player to do what they normally do. Make that offensive player eat up extra possessions and limit their efficiency.
You’re Trading Points For Possessions
A Bron stat line could read 30 points, five rebounds and four assists and you’d think he cooked his primary defender. But how many possessions did it take him to get those 30? Were any of those rebounds on the offensive end? How many turnovers did he have?
In the NBA, you’re trading possessions for points. A player can get “their numbers,” but if they have to use an excessive amount of possessions to do so, that’s a win for the defense. Over the course of a game that leads to a team win.
Brooks is having a good start to the season. He’s doing his usual work on defense and is shooting the ball well on offense. It’s early, but that’s a good sign for a team that was tied for the worst record in the league last season at 22-60.
He knows his young teammates need to approach games differently, and it starts with a commitment on the defensive end. It starts with him and how he plays Bron.
“Full-courting him when he wants to bring it up,” Brooks said of his plan for guarding James. “Any time he’s posting up on the block, I’m bumping him. Bumping him on the jog back. If he’s guarding me I want to attack him. Just getting him into multiple actions.”
It’s a smart game plan because Bron is old in terms of the basketball world. He’s 38 years old and has a lot of miles on that body. He’s still playing elite-level basketball, but that level of making him race up and down the floor constantly is not what he wants to do. Defending through multiple actions is also not what he would prefer.
Will Brooks and the Rockets be able to execute? We’ll find out on Wednesday night.
