You know you are onto something real when opposing teams start trying to speak a narrative into existence. In this case, it is the Lakers and it is Dillon Brooks. And the volume alone tells you everything
you need to know.
Brooks has been a tone setter all season. He came to Phoenix in the Kevin Durant trade and brought the exact opposite of what Durant represented here, at least in terms of identity, engagement, and culture. Durant is an all-time hooper. Drop him onto almost any roster and the basketball gets better immediately. His skill bends the game.
But that version of greatness was no longer what Phoenix needed. The organization was fractured. The cupboard was bare. The bill was coming due. You could feel it night after night over the last two seasons.
Durant carries gravity. Reverence. He becomes the sun around which everything orbits. Teammates defer. The ball sticks. Not out of selfishness, but out of respect. That is not a knock. It is the reality of how basketball behaves around someone that great. And in Phoenix, it created a team that waited instead of acted.
Then came Dillon Brooks.
He does not bend the floor with shot-making gravity. He bends it with pressure. He gets up in your shorts. He bumps. He talks. He claws. He plays defense like it is personal, like every possession is an argument he intends to win. He became the tone setter on day one, and that is exactly what Mat Ishbia and Brian Gregory were hunting for. An edge. A spine. A pulse.
The team has fed off it ever since.
Collin Gillespie has stepped into his Villain Jr era and found his voice. Jordan Goodwin comes off the bench breathing fire, playing with the same tenacity he always had, except now it is welcomed, amplified, and encouraged. This group no longer waits for permission. They initiate.
So when opposing teams start chirping, start hoping, start trying to will a collapse into existence, that is usually the clearest signal. Something real has taken hold.
When the Suns play teams like the Lakers, the opposing fan base turns Dillon Brooks into a full-blown public enemy. It is all venom and outrage over how he guards LeBron James, how he crowds space, how he plays basketball like it owes him money. Too physical. Too loud. Too much.
And yet, in the same breath, while they are watching the Suns stack points and control the tone of the game, something else creeps in. You can feel it. They look at their own roster. They look at each other. And they quietly admit the part they hate out loud.
That is the exact archetype they are missing.
Not the scorer. Not the star. The irritant. The instigator. The guy who drags the game into the mud and dares you to live there with him. Brooks plays over-aggressively in basketball, sure. But he also plays necessary basketball. And when Phoenix is dictating terms, when the Suns are louder, meaner, and more alive, that realization lands hard on the other side.
The Lakers are a struggling team, even if the standings try to tell you otherwise. They sit in the fourth seed at 21-11, living off the fumes of a hot start that feels like it happened in another lifetime. They opened the year 15-4, everyone puffing their chest, everyone doing victory laps in November. Since then, reality has crept in. They are 6-7 over their last 13 games, and the grand LeBron return has not delivered the jolt they imagined. In games where their 41-year-old future Hall of Famer suits up, they are 10-6. Solid. Not scary. Not dominant. Not the thing that keeps other teams up at night.
So now their fan base is doing what fan bases do when the cracks start to show. They are diagnosing. They are identifying weaknesses. They are searching for the missing ingredient. That ingredient? Dillon Brooks.
The difference with Lakers fans is that when they start whispering something loud enough, history says it tends to materialize. The NBA gods have always been kind to them.
Kareem wanted LA, so Kareem got LA. Shaq wanted LA, so Shaq got LA. Gail Goodrich turns into Magic Johnson. Vlade Divac turns into Kobe Bryant. Then there is the Luka Doncic mess from last year, which still reads like satire. Call it smart front offices if you want, and some of it is. A lot of it feels like dumb luck wearing a purple and gold jersey. Suns fans know this story from the other side. We are the franchise that lost a coin flip to start existence and have been paying interest on it ever since.
Now here we are again. Lakers fans trying to will a Dillon Brooks trade into existence. Scrolling timelines. Posting mock deals. Speaking it into the universe like it is a spell they have cast a hundred times before. And in classic fan base fashion (and yes, we are guilty of this too) some of the proposed trades are comedy. Truly unhinged stuff.
Because apparently, what the Suns need in exchange for the guy who changed their identity, their edge, their heartbeat, is Rui Hachimura. Or Gabe Vincent and Maxi Kleber.
What adds fuel to the fire? Bleacher Report’s Dan Favale putting out a “3 Trade Targets for Every NBA Team In 2026” article. In his piece, he notes the following for the Lakers:
Shakier defense coupled with Austin Reaves’ calf strain could force the Los Angeles Lakers to recalibrate their trade-deadline approach. Is it really worth targeting players who, at minimum, will cost the one first-round pick they can deal (2031 or 2032)?
Herb Jones or Dillon Brooks would outfit this team with the type of stopper who can propel it to a deeper playoff push. Both are also shaky spacers who will cost first-round goodies. Neither should torpedo the offense, but the Lakers aren’t a high volume or particularly efficient three-point-shooting squad. They have to consider that variable.
Worth noting, his proposed fixes for Phoenix were Zion, Saddiq Bey, or Rui. Fine. That is one lane. But the part that really grabbed attention was how quickly the idea of Dillon Brooks lit a fire with the Lakers crowd. You could feel it spreading in real time.
That fan base is in diagnosis mode now, poking at the roster, circling the weak spots, asking uncomfortable questions about why things feel flatter than they should. And when the name Dillon Brooks comes up, there is no immediate rejection. No recoil. No hard no.
Because deep down, they know it. Adding a Villain is not something they are afraid of anymore. It is something they are openly considering.
So let Lakers fans keep talking themselves into a Dillon Brooks trade. It is hilariously ironic when you remember how much they have despised him all season. The only game they have beaten the Suns this year came with an asterisk the size of LeBron’s shadow, the night Brooks got tossed for getting right up in LeBron James’ grill. That is the Dillon Brooks effect in the raw.
I will admit it. I was not a Brooks guy when he was in Memphis or Houston. I rolled my eyes at the antics. I mocked the aggression. I questioned the attitude. Nobody enjoys playing against a guy who treats every possession like a personal vendetta and spends forty-eight minutes trying to crawl under your skin. That kind of player is exhausting when he is on the other side.
Then he put on a Suns jersey and everything snapped into focus.
Now I see the method inside the madness. I see it night after night. The edge. The bite. The way his presence changes the temperature of a game. I appreciate it in a way I never did before, because Phoenix needed someone willing to live in that space. Someone who enjoys the chaos instead of shrinking from it.
Lakers fans will keep hating him every chance they get. That part is inevitable. But deep down, they know the truth. He is the exact type of player they are missing. And there is something deeply satisfying about that.
Yes, they have the championships. We all know the script. Every time you start making sense in a conversation with a Lakers fan, they reach for the nuclear option. Zero rings. Conversation over. Do not talk scheme. Do not talk roster construction. Do not talk culture. They will remind you, loudly, that Phoenix has never climbed that mountain. Like we forgot.
But here is the part they cannot argue away. Right now, in this moment, the Suns have something the Lakers want. Something they need. And something they cannot have.
And his name is Dillon Brooks.
