Dillon Brooks absolutely torched Team USA in the FIBA World Cup bronze medal game on Sunday. The polarizing wing hit seven of eight 3-pointers en route to 39 points as Canada upset the Americans, 127-118, in overtime. It’s only the second time that a player has made seven three-pointers in a medal game over the last 30 years. Kevin Durant made seven 3s in the 2010 World Cup final in Turkey.
This is a monumental moment for Canada, which wins its first major international basketball medal in 87 years. And Brooks’ performance was far from an outlier. He was sensational all tournament long, averaging 15 points on a sizzling 76.1 true-shooting percentage while taking home the tournament’s Best Defensive Player award.
“He’s been getting wish-washed this whole summer, but he’s an unbelievable player,” Kelly Olynyk said of Brooks’ performance. “He plays his ass off every single day. He’s someone you want fighting beside you in the locker room. I was really happy to see him play the way he did. He’s just gotten better and better every game for us.”
Neither Canada’s victory nor Brooks’ showing should come as a shock. Canada had the best player on the court, by a wide margin, in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Brooks, should you need a reminder, is a good, at times very good, NBA basketball player.
That’s why the Houston Rockets just gave him a four-year, $86 million contract. That sounds like a steep number, and it is, particularly for a guy who has been a wildly inefficient scorer throughout his career and runs the perpetual risk of writing loudmouth checks neither he nor his team can cash.
Such was the case against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, who made Brooks look like such a clown in last season’s playoff elimination that there was virtually no chance the Memphis Grizzlies would bring him and all his excess baggage back.
With seemingly no other bidders at the table, at least not anywhere near that price, the Rockets paying all that money to Brooks turned a lot of heads. But new head coach Ime Udoka is looking to build a…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/dillon-brooks-may-be-a-loose-cannon-but-he-just-sank-the-americans-with-an-all-time-international-performance/
Author : Brad Botkin
Publish date : 2023-09-10 21:20:30
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