They’re the NBA’s Most Pleasant Surprise—and They’re Powered by the Most Hated Man in Basketball

It hasn’t made him many friends around the league.

But this season, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more popular athlete around Houston. After four years without so much as a playoff berth, the Rockets have sprinted out to a 12-6 record thanks in large part to one of the league’s most formidable defenses. And they have the most hated man in basketball to thank for it.

“I play with the mantra, ‘Smashmouth, physical, no bulls—t,’” Brooks said. “You’re the bad guy—and you don’t care what people think.”

At a time when offenses are lighting up scoreboards at record rates, Houston is a bruising, bully-ball outlier. The Rockets swat away shots, gobble up rebounds and smother opposing dribblers. They have surrendered just 105.1 points per game this season, the third-lowest mark in the NBA entering Monday’s games.

But with Brooks on the court, the already stingy Rockets turn into something far more fearsome. When coach Ime Udoka puts him in the lineup, Houston gives up 16.4 fewer points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning The Glass. That drop in opponents’ scoring is the second-biggest decrease of any player in the entire league. Brooks basically turns great teams average—and average teams into the Washington Generals.

“He’s the head of the snake,” Udoka said. “He sets the tone on a nightly basis.”

Brooks, who stands 6-foot-6 with the bulging shoulders of a UFC fighter, isn’t the fastest, tallest or strongest player in the NBA. But as it turns out, his exact combination of speed and muscle—blended with a fierce determination—lets him chase a shooter around the 3-point arc in one moment and wrestle with a big man the next. That blend makes him the perfect defensive specialist in an era when the NBA’s scorers seem capable of doing almost anything they want on the court.

Just look at the numbers some of the NBA’s biggest stars put up when they have to tangle with the Rockets. Giannis Antetokounmpo managed just 20 points against Houston—his lowest total of the season. In two losses to Houston in the span of 10 days, Wembanyama scored a meager 29 points combined. The Rockets’ complex defensive system switches assignments regularly, Udoka pointed out, but Brooks “takes pride in those one-on-one matchups.”

Before he came to Houston, Brooks was known as much for his controversies as his defensive prowess. He first made national news in college at Oregon, when—after the Ducks knocked Duke out of the NCAA Tournament—Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski lectured Brooks in the handshake line about his on-court decorum.

In Memphis, where he spent the first six years of his pro career, Brooks made a habit of sparring with some of the league’s most accomplished players—and he didn’t always come out on the winning side. During the Grizzlies’ first-round playoff matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2023, Brooks singled out James as a matchup he didn’t mind.

“I poke bears,” Brooks said. James promptly led the Lakers to a 4-2 series win—with Brooks getting ejected from one of the games.

“There were definitely some self-created distractions in the series and along the way,” Memphis general manager Zach Kleiman said after the loss. “We’re going to take a different approach as it pertains to that next season.”

But when Udoka was hired to reshape the Rockets before the 2023-24 season, he saw something else in Brooks. He wasn’t put off by his bravado. In fact, it made him just the sort of player he wanted to build around. Houston signed Brooks with the objective of improving a defense that had just finished second-to-last in the NBA. And two years into the experiment, the results have been even better than anyone could have hoped for.

Not only has Brooks excelled individually, he’s also helped create a bunch of mini-Dillon Brookses in his wake. The young wing tandem of Amen Thompson and Tari Eason has earned the nickname “The Terror Twins” for the nightmares they cause for opposing ballhandlers. If they came into the league with the athleticism to cause problems, it was Brooks who taught them how to tap into the requisite mindset.

“That’s the biggest thing he gives us,” Udoka said of Brooks. “It’s a ton of effort, but also a mean streak. You can’t be ‘buddy-buddy’ with guys out there. You’re basically in a war, one-on-one.”

And if that mindset makes the Rockets youngsters a few enemies around the league, well, in Brooks’ world, that’s not such a bad thing. 

“Any reaction is good, for me,” Brooks said. “It gets them out of their game.”

Write to Robert O’Connell at robert.oconnell@wsj.com