The Houston Rockets were willing to move on from Dillon Brooks in the Kevin Durant deal with the Phoenix Suns, but the plan to replace him with Dorian Finney-Smith has aged badly.
That much came through in a recent conversation on Yossi Gozlan’s Third Apron Podcast, where Kelly Iko of Yahoo! Sports said Houston misread what it was getting when it banked on Finney-Smith to provide a similar impact.
“I think they got the calculus wrong. When you look at Dillon Brooks departing in the Kevin Durant trade, and you're looking at the market which isn't as robust as you would have hoped... when you look at what Dorian was doing in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, he was an excellent shooter, excellent floor-spacer. He can guard bigs, he can guard guards... but the one thing they didn't account for was the recovery time (offseason ankle surgery).”
The idea was understandable on paper. Finney-Smith had shown enough with the Lakers and Nets to look like a workable stand-in for some of Brooks’ production. But when Houston needed that presence most, he never got close to matching it.
It got worse from there. The Rockets eventually had to attach three second-round picks just to move Finney-Smith to the Suns’ preferred trade partner, the Charlotte Hornets.
Meanwhile, Brooks kept rolling in Phoenix. Last season, he posted a career-high 20.2 points per game and settled into a role that fit him. The Suns rewarded him with a new three-year, $73 million extension, even if the criticism around him never really went away.
Houston was never going to keep Brooks in the Durant trade. But losing the player who helped define what the team was became the bigger issue.
The attempt to patch that hole with a one-year Finney-Smith solution looked like a practical answer at the time. In hindsight, it was a mess.
For Brooks, the move has only reinforced that he landed in the right spot at the right time. For Finney-Smith, at 33, the road looks much harder, especially with Royce O'Neale standing in his way in Charlotte.
The NBA has also taken notice of how Brooks’ profile has grown. The Suns are set for nine national TV appearances after New Year’s Day, giving more fans a chance to see just how well he’s playing - and how far off Houston’s replacement plan really was.
In the end, the Rockets found themselves in a familiar trap, and underestimating Dillon Brooks played a major part in how they got there.
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