Dillon Brooks went from tone-setter to free agent. Will another team take a chance?

TORONTO — One evening in early March, before Dillon Brooks became the NBA’s enemy No. 1 and persona non-grata — even in his NBA home — the burly Canadian wing was chilling on the bench courtside in Denver, killing time before his pre-game warm-up.

He saw a familiar face, smiled hello, and made room for me to have a seat. The Memphis Grizzlies forward was only a couple of hours removed from a showdown with old rival Jamal Murray and the Denver Nuggets, a game that at the time had significant implications for first place in the Western Conference.

It was also almost the perfect ‘before’ snapshot of a Grizzlies season that was going so well before it unravelled in a hurry, with Brooks one of the loose ends they could never get tied up.

After several weeks of tumult and social media buffeting, a lot of missed shots and a premature end to the Grizzlies’ once-promising season, the ‘after’ came into focus Tuesday when a report from Shams Charania of The Athletic said the Brooks — a pending free agent — would not be back with Memphis “under any circumstances.” 

It’s a little more than ‘we’ve decided to go our separate ways’ and indicates it was more than just a personnel decision.

Earlier this season the Grizzlies held their young veteran in the highest regard. There had been talks of a contract extension. 

“I always say when it comes to DB, he’s a tone-setter for us. I love his leadership,” Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins said when Memphis visited Toronto on Dec. 29. “This is my fourth season [as head coach] and he’s definitely one of the elder statesman when it comes to time (with) the Grizzlies. He’s embraced the city, he’s embraced the Grizzlies culture on and off the floor but then he just wears that hard hat every single day. Comes to work, sets an example for his teammates, the voice has grown, that confidence to push his team to the next level… I’m very impressed with what he’s done. An absolute tone setter for us.”

A split seemed like the farthest possible thing on anyone’s mind then or even when I spoke with Brooks in March.

At that moment the Mississauga product and former Henry Carr Secondary School and CIA Bounce star — as is his way, in my experience — couldn’t have been friendlier or in a better frame of mind. We caught up on a few things, he mentioned how hard he’d been training in season to add some bulk to help him with the tough, physical work of guarding some of the NBA’s most talented athletes — he might earn all-defence recognition as a result — and how he’d even given up (mostly) deserts to keep as lean as possible. He gave me some insights on defending Murray and how he was still trying to get payback for when the Kitchener, Ont., guard used to kick his butt in youth hoops and how much he respected his friend’s fearlessness and willingness to put himself on the line when the games were most tense.

Unbeknownst to him or me so many things were about to happen that have changed almost everything since, directly and indirectly leading to Memphis moving on from a player they drafted him 45th overall in 2017 and someone who’d been a starter and culture setter for all of his six seasons.

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The Grizzlies’ match-up with the Nuggets was being featured on ESPN. In support ESPN.com dropped a feature on Brooks that included a number of choice quotes, none more than Brooks’ verbal takedown of Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green.

“I don’t like Draymond at all,” Brooks said in the piece. “I just don’t like Golden State. I don’t like anything to do with them. Draymond talks a lot. Gets away with a lot, too. His game is cool — with Golden State — but if you put him anywhere else, you’re not going to know who Draymond is…”

Not surprisingly the quote had pretty much gone viral by the time we spoke. I asked him about it and Brooks briefly tried to suggest that it had been taken out of context to which I said, “what did you expect?”

Brooks shrugged, acknowledging the point.

Things only got weirder and wilder from there.

Brooks’ line ricocheted around social media again a few days later when Green did a line-by-line takedown of Brooks on his podcast (pro-tip: don’t trash talk a trash talker who has his own podcast) that finished — with a certain amount of prescience as it turns out — with this: “The dynasty starts after you. Not with you…”

If that was all that happened that Friday back in Denver, it wouldn’t be so notable.

But that was also the same night that Grizzlies reserve centre Brandon Clarke tore his Achilles and was ruled out for the season and star guard Ja Morant posted a video of himself on social media waving a gun in what turned out to be a Denver strip club, leading to an eight-game suspension. To top it all off Brooks picked up his 16th technical foul of the regular season, earning himself the first of what ended up being two suspensions on the season, and the Grizzlies got thumped, pretty much eliminating any chance they had of reeling in the Nuggets for first place in the West.

It was a busy 24 hours, and the Grizzlies — and Brooks — never really got back on track.

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Undeterred by the Green blowback, Brooks took his beefs public with even more vigour over the remaining few weeks of the season, peaking when he chose to go after LeBron James as the No. 2 seeded Grizzlies were tied 1-1 with the No. 7 seeded Lakers in the first round of what Memphis was hoping to be a long playoff run.

“I don’t care — he’s old. You know what I mean?” Brooks said after exchanging words with the 38-year-old legend. “I was waiting for that. I was expecting him to do that in Game 4, Game 5. He wanted to say something when I got my fourth foul. He should have been saying that earlier on. But I poke bears. I don’t respect no one until they come and give me 40.”

But as the series wore on and the Grizzlies fell behind — eventually getting beaten by 40 in the deciding sixth game — it seemed that Brooks’ campaign to rev up his own competitive juices and to bring the Grizzlies along with him to the fight was backfiring. The Grizzlies dropped the series and Brooks played some of the worst basketball of his career, shooting just 31 per cent from the field and 23 per cent from the three-point line. He also got a flagrant foul for hitting James in the groin and was caught out defensively, too, on a couple of key plays. By the end of the series he wasn’t even the Grizzlies’ first choice to guard James and the Lakers weren’t guarding him at all, taking their chances that his shooting slump was more feature than bug.

Hints that a split might be coming surfaced when the Grizzlies had their end-of-season media availabilities on Sunday when Memphis general manager Zack Kleiman lamented “self-created distractions” being an issue against the Lakers and that the club plans to take a “different approach” regarding trash talk next season, while also being non-committal on Brooks’ free agency.

Just important: the on-court fit was proving to be awkward. The Grizzlies valued his defence but were moving away from him as a primary offensive option — his usage rate was down to 21.8 per cent from a career-high 28.8 per cent last season. He shot just 32.6 per cent from the three-point line for the season. Meanwhile, Brooks remained adamant that he has more to offer offensively. “I was just there to three-and-D, shoot and play defence,” he told reporters on Sunday. “I got way more to my game than that.”

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He’ll find out if anyone else in the NBA agrees. His defence and competitive fire will travel. In a league that can often veer too far to the casual side of competition, Brooks deserves all the credit possible for being determined to single-handedly drag himself, his teammates and anyone else caught in the crossfire back into a fight, whether they wanted to be there or not.

But it’s tempting to wonder if it all caught up to Brooks. Almost since the day I sat down with him in early March his professional life has been on blast, his talk and his play serving as a content factory for every media platform out there.

Until the very end, when he skipped out of his last two media availabilities during the Lakers series he doubled down on his reputation as one of the NBA’s premiere “heels,’ cultivating the ‘Dillon the villain’ on-court persona which is so opposed to the low-key and approachable version of himself he rolls with when the lights aren’t on.

From a distance, it all seemed exhausting, and maybe it was.

But Brooks wasn’t backing down earlier this week.

“It’s just competition, it’s competing,” he said. “And most people are scared to compete. And that’s why they get rattled or feel some sort of way when I play against them, it’s because I’m trying to compete at the highest, highest level. That’s the only way that I got into this realm, so I’m not going to change.”

The NBA marketplace will let him know this summer if that’s a wise path or not.

More from Sportsnet

Grizzlies’ Brooks doesn’t regret comments towards LeBron, says ‘that’s who I am’

Page Unturned: LeBron James vs. Steph Curry remains NBA’s premiere attraction

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