During recent weeks, Houston Rockets forward Dillon Brooks enjoyed a strong run to help Canada to a third-place finish in the 2023 FIBA World Cup. Each game was of paramount importance, which seemed to bring out the best in Brooks.
Entering the 2023-24 season, Brooks believes the NBA’s new in-season tournament can provide a similar dynamic — especially for a young and somewhat rebuilding team such as the Rockets.
Speaking from the World Cup, here’s what Brooks told Jake Fischer of Yahoo! Sports about the league’s latest competition:
It just makes it to where anytime you can step on that floor, you can win that basketball game. It makes it more like this. More stress on the game. More priority on it. Overall it’s helping our game, and you get a little money out of it. …
It just stresses those games against Denver, the Clippers, all those games that we have in the in-season tournament. It stresses more that we gotta put more effort into those, so we can find a way to be on the top of our pool.
“There will be natural incentive for less-experienced teams to chase in-season glory, in addition to building momentum for a rebuild’s first playoff push,” Fischer writes.
Both of those descriptions apply to Houston, which kicks off group-stage play for the in-season tournament on Friday, Nov. 10, at home versus New Orleans.
Each player on the tournament’s winner earns a $500,000 prize.
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The FIBA World Cup was a close analog to this year’s inaugural NBA in-season tournament, leaving a record 55 players with added excitement for Nov. 3. “More stress on the game. More priority on it,” Dillon Brooks told @YahooSports. https://t.co/69L7oKl4p5
— Jake Fischer (@JakeLFischer) September 27, 2023