Why the Dillon Brooks contract is fine
Ultimate example of sticker shock
After signing their reported number one offseason target in Fred VanVleet, the Houston Rockets did this with their remaining cap space yesterday:
The reaction to this contract was everything you’d expect it to be.
Let’s first acknowledge this: $20 million annually is indeed a lot of money. This is not the sweetheart deal the Rockets signed Jae’Sean Tate to last offseason. If Houston was able to sign him to the previously reported $15 million annual number that they were rumored to be pursuing, it would be a different story. That deal could’ve been labeled as a very similar team-friendly deal. But, as with everything, context is king here.
Let’s break this down.
Why the Rockets had to pay this price
The Rockets exorbitant cap room was like a ticking time bomb for the first 24 hours of free agency and everyone in the NBA knew it. Fred VanVleet was able to leverage it to receive a deal well north of his fair-market value and other free agents were using the threat of Houston as leverage for their own deals. When the Rockets were able to ink a deal with VanVleet, they were sitting in prime position to acquire their remaining targets of Brook Lopez and Dillon Brooks. This gave them some leverage with Brooks.
Houston could credibly say “Listen, this other guy is a better player than you and after we get done signing him, we can only pay you X amount”.
But when Lopez came off the board for the Rockets, they could no longer make that claim. There were no other free agents that were realistically going to come to Houston. They now had the money to splurge for Brooks.
One of two things happened:
The Rockets agreed to a handshake deal with Brooks’ camp that if Lopez didn’t work out, they would repay them for taking the risk of having the market dry up on them. If Houston asked Brooks’ camp to wait until Lopez made his decision, it would 100% be fair for them to ask for an incentive ahead of time.
There wasn’t a handshake agreement, but Brooks’ camp wisely leveraged their position after the Lopez signing to squeeze more out of Houston. The Rockets begrudgingly caved because they don't view $20 million annually as a bad deal for Brooks.
We may or may not ever find out which story is true, but the underlying circumstances are roughly the same. Cap space and mid-level exceptions were being used up left and right while Brooks was just sitting there for a day waiting for Lopez to make his decision.
Why it’s actually not a bad price
Again, this isn’t a sweetheart deal for Brooks and that’s not what’s being argued here. However, I do believe this will turn out to be a fair-market value for his services. Regardless of how you feel about Dillon Brooks, everyone agrees with these two things:
He was voted 2nd Team All-Defense last year by the very people that have been killing him these past few months.
It was never a question that he was going to walk into his next team as a Day 1 starter, especially the Rockets.
So this is a starting caliber, 2nd Team All-Defense wing. Regardless of everyone’s personal feelings towards Brooks, this has remained the consensus opinion.
Players like that cost a fair bit of money. As a point of reference, here are the annual numbers for some other starting caliber wings around the NBA that shoot near the same career three-point percentage as Brooks (34.2%):
R.J. Barrett - $26.8 million (career 34.3% three-point shooter)
Andrew Wiggins - $27.3 million (career 35.4% three-point shooter)
De’Andre Hunter - $22.5 million (career 35.6% three-point shooter)
Caris LeVert - $16.0 million (career 34.4% three-point shooter)
Some of these players offer more offensively than Brooks, but defensively he’s a step ahead of all these guys.
This has been said before, but that doesn’t make it any less true: $20 million/year is not the same as it was 10 years ago. For example, in 2014-15, the Houston Rockets agreed to to pay Trevor Ariza an average annual salary of $8 million. You may be saying to yourself, “Cool. Brooks is getting $12 million more per year. What’s your point?” The salary cap in 2014-15 was $63 million. This year, it’s $136 million.
Percentage of the cap:
Trevor Ariza contract in 2014-15:
12.7%
Dillon Brooks contract in 2023-24:
14.7%
It’s not 2014-15 anymore. We need to stop thinking about annual contract numbers in those terms. The Rockets essentially paid a 2% “bad team tax” to get Brooks to Houston. And ultimately, that’s perfectly fine.
To be clear, I’m not comparing Brooks to Ariza as players. For a number of reasons, they’re totally different players. Ariza is just an easy example that Rockets fans will remember of a starting caliber wing player from the past who was thought to be on a reasonable contract.
People need to calm down. This Dillon Brooks contract is fine.