To that end, and barring acts of God or on-court miracles, we’re continuing our weekly series that examines all five members of the Suns’ projected starting lineup with the goal of pinpointing one specific area where each player must improve in order to make it work.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve taken a look at Devin Booker’s pull-up 3 being the final missing piece in his game, as well as the need for Jalen Green to supply more rim pressure. This week, we’re diving into Dillon Brooks’ shot selection and occasional tunnel vision.

The Suns need Dillon Brooks to reduce his tunnel vision

First things first: Dillon Brooks had a tremendous season in Phoenix, and he earned every penny of that three-year, $73 million extension he received this summer. There’s a certain give-and-take duality that comes with a player like Brooks, but with Jalen Green missing so much of last season, the Suns needed someone to step up and be aggressive on offense. Brooks didn’t need to be asked once, let alone twice.

While Phoenix navigated all those injuries, Brooks averaged a career-high 20.2 points on a career-high 17.1 shot attempts per game, all while flashing his most complete (and irrationally confident) season yet as an iso scorer and post threat. The Suns needed someone other than Devin Booker to create his own shot, and Brooks answered the bell with a bevy of pull-up jumpers, turnarounds and fadeaways that showcased impressive shake-and-bake footwork to free up his shot:

According to Cleaning The Glass, Brooks ranked in the 97th percentile in midrange shot frequency among wings, taking a whopping 50 percent of his shots from there. He made a respectable 46 percent of those looks, which placed him in the 70th percentile at his position.

The BBall Index placed him pretty favorably among the league’s best individual shot creators, especially when it came to metrics that are adjusted to account for shot difficulty:

• 98th percentile in one-on-one shot-making
• 97th percentile in one-on-one shot-making efficiency
• 99th percentile in midrange shot creation
• 91st percentile in midrange shot-making efficiency

Combine all of that with Brooks’ work on the extended block, where he ranked in the 92nd percentile in stable points per possession on post-ups, and the Suns had a great complementary piece who could help provide individual offense in a pinch.

That was on full display in his irrationally confident playoff series against the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder. Even factoring in a brutal shooting performance in Game 1, Brooks led Phoenix in scoring for the series, averaging 26.0 points per game on .459/.438/1.000 shooting splits.

While Booker absorbed the brunt of the attention from the NBA’s stingiest defense, Brooks capitalized on the matchups he saw as a result, repeatedly turning Chet Holmgren — arguably the league’s most impactful defender outside of Victor Wembanyama — into barbecue chicken:

Bearing all that in mind, it’d be natural to question why Brooks’ shot selection is his designated area for improvement…if you had never watched Dillon Brooks play basketball before, that is.

Because as good as Brooks was last season, the Suns’ offense still only ranked 17th, and there’s definitely a ceiling on how good your team can be if Dillon Brooks is your second option. With a healthier Jalen Green, plus Miles Bridges entering the fold, Brooks can’t function the same way he did last season, and there are plenty of numbers to back up the reasons for that.

For starters, part of the allure (and the harm) with Dillon Brooks is that he routinely takes tough shots. The BBall Index placed him in the 22nd percentile in “one-on-one shot quality,” as well as the 34th percentile in midrange shot quality and the 27th percentile in pull-up shot quality. In other words, even though the Villain can create shots for himself, a lot of them are tough, contested looks.

Despite what the film and the above numbers indicate, it wasn’t always pretty either. Brooks’ favorable numbers in the midrange hid the fact that he took a lot of long midrange jumpers (94th percentile in frequency) but didn’t make enough to be a truly efficient scorer (46th percentile in accuracy).

He barely got to the rim (12th percentile in frequency) or took corner 3s (eighth percentile in frequency), and he wasn’t accurate from either spot on the floor (44th percentile in rim accuracy, 26th percentile in corner 3-point accuracy).

Add it all up and Brooks only ranked in the 26th percentile among wings in points per shot attempt…despite having a staggering usage rate in the 97th percentile. Brooks may have had a very good individual season, but it wasn’t enough to lift the Suns’ offense or completely put him among the game’s best offensive engines.

Take, for example, how Brooks fared on his bread and butter plays: isos and post-ups. To his credit, Brooks’ 0.98 points per possession on isos ranked 28th in the NBA among the 59 players who averaged at least 2.0 iso possessions per game. His effective field goal percentage on those isos ranked 24th, and his score frequency on those plays ranked 30th.

That’s pretty good for a guy filling in as a second option when he’s really best-suited as a third or fourth option!

But there are levels to this, especially when you compare Brooks’ numbers on iso plays to someone like Devin Booker:

• Devin Booker 2025-26 isolations: 3.6 possessions per game (14th), 1.05 PPP (13th), 53.0 eFG% (11th), 50.9% score frequency (7th)
• Dillon Brooks 2025-26 isolations: 2.6 possessions per game (38th), 0.98 PPP (28th), 50.0 eFG% (24th), 46.6% score frequency (30th)

That gap may not seem too substantial, but it’s within those margins that you see the difference between “face of the franchise, star-caliber offensive engine” and “useful role player having a great season.” Brooks wasn’t close enough to the former to justify receiving a large volume of ill-advised shots again this season, especially if the Suns’ starting lineup stays healthier this time around.

It’s the same story on post-ups. Brooks averaged the 29th-most post-up possessions per game in the league, and out of 39 players who averaged at least 1.5 post-ups per game, his effective field goal percentage ranked 20th, while his points per possession on those plays ranked 18th.

Those are good numbers! They’re just not elite enough to warrant a heavy dose of those plays moving forward, especially with this new-look starting five. When his shots are falling, the Suns should ride the hot hand. But Brooks can be incredibly, detrimentally streaky, and it wasn’t just Game 1 against OKC where his overly ambitious shot attempts sacrificed the potential to produce better, more efficient looks:

For better and for worse, Brooks often gets tunnel vision against favorable matchups. The problem is, Dillon Brooks never saw a matchup he didn’t deem “favorable.” That type of thing can fly when the team is missing Jalen Green, or Devin Booker, or Mark Williams, or all of the above, but if all of those guys — and now Miles Bridges — are on the floor, it’s going to be hard to justify Brooks being a ball-stopping iso scorer who takes audacious shots but doesn’t make them at an otherworldly clip.

The problem is, Brooks offers little to nothing as a passer or playmaker. He nearly recorded as many turnovers (98) as he did assists last season (99), and despite his mammoth usage rate, he finished sixth on the Suns roster in secondary assists, ninth in potential assists and ninth in assist points created.

Furthermore, out of the 35 players who attempted at least 16 field goal attempts per game last season, Brooks ranked dead last in both assists (1.8 per game) and assist percentage (9.4 percent). It’s far from ideal that his teammate, Jalen Green, also ranked 31st in assists and 26th in assist percentage on that very same list.

The BBall Index drives the point home further. Brooks only ranked in the 37th percentile in “quick decision-making percentage,” the 23rd percentile in assist points per 75 possessions, and the sixth percentile in role-adjusted potential assists per 100 passes.

And before your eyes completely glaze over, Brooks also ranked in the first percentile in assist-to-usage ratio among NBA wings. That’s pretty terrible!

So forgive me for not exactly believing that Dillon Brooks will turn into a plus playmaker just because general manager Brian Gregory has apparently been in his ear about passing more this season.

“Passing, BG told me I gotta work on passing,” Brooks told AZ Central’s Duane Rankin when asked how he intends to get better after a career year. “I’ve been working on that.”

Over the last two years, Brooks has ranked in the 43rd and 40th percentile in passing creation volume. It’s just not really something one can expect him to incorporate into his game overnight, but maybe turning some of those post-ups into passing opportunities could open things up for his teammates. We saw some of that during his time in Houston:

As nice as it’d be to turn some of Dillon Brooks’ strengths as a scorer into the secondary playmaking this group badly needs to alleviate the pressure on Devin Booker, it’s just not realistic to expect that from a guy entering his age-31 season.

But Brooks doesn’t have to be some facilitator or point forward to help this starting five click; fine-tuning his shot selection and cutting down on his tunnel vision would suffice.

More than likely, the Suns will have to settle for Brooks being willing to take more of a backseat, occasionally pass out of the post, and ideally, not force the issue with tunnel vision and brutal shot selection. It made sense last year for a shorthanded team that needed that extra shot creation, but assuming everyone’s healthy, if Jordan Ott wants to cobble together an above-average offense, a little bit less might be more for Dillon Brooks.

For more of Gerald Bourguet’s Suns work, check back with Sports360AZ on a weekly basis, subscribe to his Patreon articles and podcast at Suns After Dark, or follow him on Twitter.