In last year's playoffs, Dillon Brooks repeatedly made headlines for antagonizing LeBron James in the matchup between the Grizzlies and Lakers. The end result, somewhat predictably, was several big games for James and a 4-2 series win for the Lakers.
The end result for Brooks was an ignominious exit from Memphis and a new home in Houston. But, with the first matchup of the season against the Lakers, Brooks picked up right where he left off, poking the bear and saying he was, "ready to lock him up.
To everyone's surprise, he backed it up.
Brooks had a quiet offensive night himself, but he helped hold LeBron to 18 points and just 13 shots in a 34-point win for the Rockets.
Dillon Brooks did the job on LeBron James
According to the NBA's player-tracking statistics, LeBron scored just 6 points on the 34 possessions for which Brooks was his primary defender. The Lakers, as a team, scored just 24 points across the same possessions, a rate of 70.6 points per 100 possessions. LeBron was 2-of-6 from the field with 3 turnovers and just a single assist.
He definitely didn't shut LeBron down, but he was a consistent, physical impediment and he played a role in reducing his offensive engagement. With Brooks as his primary defender in this game, LeBron attempted just over 17 shots per 100 possessions, compared to 23.5 across the entire season.
On multiple possessions, LeBron either lost the ball or missed a shot and was left staring frustratedly at the officials, looking for a foul call as the Rockets pushed their offense in the other direction.
In his piece at The Athletic, Kelly Iko does a great job of breaking down the matchup in much more detail, both the successes Brooks had and the moments in which LeBron was able to break through.
In the end, this is all a much bigger deal for Brooks and the Rockets than it is for LeBron and the Lakers. The likelihood of him being able to replicate this kind of impact across a seven-game series is slim and the Lakers have far bigger concerns — Anthony Davis' fragility, shaky shooting from the supporting cast, a lack of complementary creation.
Still, for one not at least, Brooks talked the talk and was able to walk the walk as well.
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QUICK HITTER: Offense is not the problem for the Clippers
The Clippers dropped their second game since trading for James Harden and their new starting lineup was, once again, a disaster. In 30 minutes, with Harden, Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and Ivica Zubac on the floor together, by 30 points per 100 possessions, scoring themselves at a rate of just 85 points per 100 possessions.
At least some of that offensive inefficiency can be chalked up to random variance — they're just 4-of-17 from beyond the arc and won't continue to shoot that badly. But the defense has been a big concern.
The Nets and Knicks, the two teams they've faced with Harden, have similarly shot unsustainably poorly from beyond the arc against this group. Both Harden and Westbrook have looked prone to giving up dribble penetration and making slow rotations behind the action, giving up a lot of open 3s.
That lineup is, so far, surrendering 113.3 points per 100 possessions, nearly seven points worse than their season-long average and a mark that would rank 18th in the league across the entire season. And, again, that's with opponents hitting just 32.7 percent of their 3s, so things may even be worse than the numbers appear.
All that is to say, right now, making Harden and Westbrook work together on defense may be a more pressing problem than figuring out how to optimize them at the other end.
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