The very worst thing about Dillon Brooks is that his whole schtick works. You know that thing he does where he’s just the worst? Every second of every game? I hate that. I hate that it gets under my skin.
I hate that he wants to get under my skin and then succeeds without even trying. I hate that all he has to do is show up and I’m suddenly in a bad mood. Mostly, I hate that I hate it. I especially hate that, last night, he came out in the 2nd half, reached into our chest like that guy in Temple of Doom, and ripped out our still-beating heart before lowering us into a fiery pit of misery.
With about 4 minutes left in the game, I was sitting there stewing. Like, really marinating in it. The Suns were up 11 and were doing as many things right as the Spurs were doing wrong. It wasn’t falling apart so much as it had already fallen apart and now we were all sitting around staring at the mess while a bunch of dudes continued to stomp around in it. Booker executed a neat little drive and kick out to Brooks, who was shifting right into his comfort zone which, I guess, last night was anywhere in the building. He caught it and went right into his shooting motion that shouldn’t work and drained it for his 23rd point of the night. Mitch called a timeout and the camera cut to Brooks backpedaling down the court with a look on his face that made my soul wither and die right there on the spot. I turned the game off, walked outside, and stared at the moon for maybe 3 hours.
If you didn’t watch this live then go look it up! I refuse to link to it here on principle, but you will be shocked at how normal it is. How inconsequential. How casual. He’s not doing anything. It makes me sick! It’s just, like, a little smile. A smirk if you squint. Just thinking about it makes me want to fall into a coma. It was like he knew a secret about me and was delighting in simply knowing I was out there, somewhere, unravelling.
The Spurs actually started this game the right way. They were active, they were rebounding, they were getting to the line, and they built a lead while the Suns couldn’t buy a basket. Brooks wasn’t even doing much early. He was ice cold. In my head I was already using this space to bury him. I was going to stay up all night gleefully writing an obituary for the very concept of Dillon Brooks. Such was my glee that I maybe missed something. A tremor. A vibe shift. A Mission Impossible style mask reveal where Bad at Basketball Dillon Brooks ripped away his mask to reveal that actually, tonight, he was Good at Basketball Dillon Brooks. The horror!
In theory, I know how the Suns got the lead back, but I still don’t totally get it. Booker got rolling, sure. He’s wont to do that. The Spurs kept giving the ball away, sure. They’re wont to do that as well. It was Brooks though. It was him finding his rhythm that unglued me. The casual competence of it all. He wasn’t even doing any of his classic Brooksian shenanigans. He wasn’t really barking in anyone’s face or egregiously fouling people. He wasn’t acting the provocateur in any outward way beyond simply executing his game on the court in a way that slowly sucked the life out of my favorite team. It was a nightmare.
Losing to a great player is one thing. Like, Steph Curry drops consecutive forty spots on your dome and you just sort of tip your cap to it. Steph’s fine. He’s great. He’s nothing to me. Dillon Brooks is someone I genuinely don’t like. I don’t like the way he plays the game. I don’t like the way he trolls with delight. I think someone deciding to take on the mantle of, say, an even more annoying Draymond Green is borderline psychotic and probably needs to be studied. At the moment, I can’t think of anything worse than losing to a great Dillon Brooks performance without having anything legitimately juicy to complain about afterwards. Look at me. Look at what I’ve become! I’m sitting here complaining about not having anything to complain about! I deserve to be in this fiery pit. I’ve practically chosen to be here!
Look, it was a bad night. On an individual level, as a Spurs fan, it was just the worst. If I could draw you a diagram of a perfectly terrible “Watching the Spurs” experience, it would look almost exactly like this. If you watched this game, then by all means, come join me in my backyard where I will have printed out stat sheets from this game that I’m going to be throwing into a garbage can and lighting on fire until the Spurs play again in hopes of exorcising the demons who have surely glommed onto us.
If you didn’t have the pleasure of watching then please, I beg you, walk away right now. Don’t watch any highlights. Don’t think about it for more than a second. Don’t let this evil infect you the way it has me. The sooner we, as a fanbase, can forget about this Phoenician Nightmare the better. I’m sure the “Dillon Brooks Annoyed Charlie to the Point of Insanity” banner the Suns raise in their area isn’t going to help anything, but we’re going to have to try our best anyway.
Takeaways:
- Normally it’s a cold comfort to think to myself, well, if we simply had Wembanyama out there then this would’ve all gone down differently, but no, we weren’t even granted that simple grace last night. We watched this same Suns team put Wemby in a blender earlier this year and dump cold water all over our hot start to the season. Remember that one? The one where we all had to snap out of our fever dream and realize that the Spurs weren’t going to go 82–0 this year and revolutionize basketball as we know it? I remember. Phoenix is a bad place, you guys, annd I recommend the Spurs avoid it at all costs.
- Part of the deal with the Suns is that they just play really physical and really tough. As you can imagine, I am loath to mention this because it’s probably a direct result of injecting their team with the energy of Dillon Brooks, but here we are, still hanging out and talking about this silly game so I guess I have to bring it up. The Spurs aren’t unphysical, but I think they do have a hard time matching what the Suns bring to the table. This is not a scientific take at all, but the Spurs’ physicality (especially with Wemby and Castle out) is rooted in guys like Keldon and Sochan who bring a sort of benevolent, jubilant, and puckish brand of chaos to the mix. That’s great most of the time and, frankly, I enjoy watching it. It’s also not going to cut it against the evil, twisted, and malevolent brutishness Brooks inflicts on everyone in the vicinity. You have to get down in the muck with him and fight on his level, and I don’t know if San Antonio possesses that mode at present.
- Probably going to just start including a Takeaway after every game that just says “Turnovers” and then leaving it there because what else do we even need to say about it? There’s a scene in the movie Liar Liar where Jim Carrey’s secretary tells him that a client just called. That client had knocked over another ATM, this time at knifepoint, and needs Carrey’s legal advice. His response is eerily similar to mine when asked about how the Spurs can cut down on turning the ball over.
- I’m glad we keep rolling out a grey jersey every year because it’s an important counterbalance to how cool the Fiesta jerseys are. If all of our jerseys looked good then we might start having people outside the circle of trust becoming bandwagon Spurs fans, and that simply would not do.
WWL Post Game Press Conference
– I feel like you’re really leaning into a sort of sports adjacent paganism with some of these rituals.
– What do you mean?
– I don’t know, communing with the Moon? Exorcising demons via fire? Maybe paganism is the wrong word, but you seem to be tapping into something a little more… vaguely witchy, I guess.
– Sure. I think that just comes back to control. Sports are so inherently out of our control as fans that it feels natural to try and commune with them on a spiritual plane. I obviously can’t suit up and give the Spurs twelve minutes off the bench, but I can enter into a dialect with a waxing crescent Moon and try to understand her secrets. We can feed off each other’s energies, set intentions for growth, and manifest our plans for the future.
– And you think the Moon can help with that?
– I think the Moon can do a lot of things, sure, but the main thing it can do is give me something to think about that isn’t Dillon Brooks.
– The Moon is a lot more fun than Dillon Brooks
– If we’ve learned anything at all today, I’m pretty sure it’s that.
