PHOENIX — Dillon Brooks was thrilled, Oso Ighodaro was furious and the moment their Phoenix Suns teammates knew was coming had finally arrived.
OK. While they knew it was coming, they didn’t know it would be that bad.
At first, Ighodaro couldn’t recall six weeks later the exact play that lit the flame, but an eavesdropping Collin Gillespie from the other side of the locker room chimed in that he did.
Late in the second quarter against the Golden State Warriors in mid-December, De’Anthony Melton brought the ball up for Golden State and Brooks met him at halfcourt. Melton glided around Brooks, a bad gamble by the nine-year vet, and Melton finished at the rim past Ighodaro and Jordan Goodwin.
Brooks was mad at Ighodaro for not blocking it. Ighodaro was mad that Brooks was mad when Brooks was the one who made the mistake.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/8b9faccd-14e3-8a60-ae1a-d44c1b029246_1280x720.mp4You’ll see that Brooks physically emoted his dissatisfaction, and then he voiced it to Ighodaro while walking back up the floor. The second-year big man briefly shared his thoughts as well, and after a timeout two possessions later, months of Ighodaro being pestered brought the breaking point.
Brooks instantly started letting Ighodaro have it before the whistle was even blown. Ighodaro initially turned around to listen and declined to counter. Then, on second thought, he decided to yap back. It intensified during the walk to the huddle and fully uncorked there.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/IMG_4900.mp4Brooks was beaming with pride when asked about if afterward.
RELATED STORIES
Dillon Brooks has career scoring game in win vs. Pistons on his T-shirt night
“Finally, he yelled at me. Finally,” Brooks said. “Been waiting for that, been getting under his skin for about three months. Finally, he exploded.”
Did he ask for that emotion out of Ighodaro or force it out of him?
“I asked to begin with,” Brooks said. “But…”
That “but” is a crucial element to what Brooks’ presence means to a basketball team. Despite what the headline suggests, Ighodaro deserves all the credit for his big-time jump as a sophomore into one of the best backup bigs in the NBA, but it’s hard not to think how different this would look without Brooks borderline bullying him.
It started right away over the summer, long before training camp.
“Probably the first day he was there or something!” Ighodaro told Arizona Sports. “He got there early, was working out hard and kind of set the tone from the jump.”
Brooks learned how important that was from his own league beginnings in Memphis. Veterans like Mike Conley and Marc Gasol were always in his ear.
In different ways!
“Mike always used to tell me that every game was a learning experience, and that’s what I tell my young guys. Everywhere I’ve been, that’s been my main thing,” Brooks said. “Marc gave me tough skin. My first year, he never called me by my name. … He’s a good guy.”
Brooks did not want to share the nicknames — Ighodaro also declined to go into specifics on the methods behind Brooks’ motivation.
What Brooks has learned in this role is who is built for it and who is not. Within a week of jawing at his own guys over the summer, he had identified his targets.
“Yeah, cuz I talk a lot. I see it right away,” Brooks said. “And then I divert and find other ways to try and get my message across and different learning aspects because (within) the team aspect, sometimes you gotta pick and choose which battles to take.
“At the end of the day, everyone in this locker room knows I speak from no ill intention. I just want you to be better. I know from my personal growth that it makes you feel good overall, it makes you want to keep going and be an addictive person to that feeling.”
That’s why Ighodaro was always letting it slide. Not snapping back. But in that moment, he couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“Usually the stuff he’s getting on me he’s right (about), but that time he was wrong, so that’s why I yelled,” Ighodaro said.
Was Gillespie surprised seeing that unfold?
“Kind of,” he said across the locker room and a few other teammates. “I wasn’t surprised that he yelled back, but it was the way he yelled back.”
Gillespie is closer to Ighodaro than just about anyone on the roster. Had he seen him like that before?
“No.”
Ighodaro was selected by the Suns 40th overall in the 2024 NBA Draft after Phoenix’s front office did flips through multiple trade hoops to land him.
A cerebral four-year player at Marquette, Ighodaro came to the league with a package of attributes well-suited for the shape the game has taken. He’s an excellent passer with a terrific feel for the game and has elite speed for his position that he most predominantly uses on the defensive end.
His rookie season was derailed by an inconsistent role on an even more inconsistent team. This year, however, Ighodaro was armed with a head coach in Jordan Ott that had a system perfect for his unique skills and a consistent role.
He has thrived.
“We gotta give Oso props, man,” Suns guard Devin Booker said. “He’s stepped it up, he’s gotten better every opportunity he’s had out there and he’s seen his role grow throughout. Him and Dillon have their little pitty-patter back and forth, and Dillon has challenged him on the defensive end.”
The mundane 5.5 points per game do not tell the tale, and you’d be foolish to rely on it as a judge for how effective Ighodaro is.
“He does unique things that some big men don’t have,” Brooks said of Ighodaro. “He does little things on the offensive and the defensive end. … He’s got a lot of tools that he can tap into. He’s willing to listen, and he’s willing to work and you see it coming out.”
Sort through the best lineup combinations, duos and trios when it comes to efficiency, and Ighodaro is littered in ’em. Phoenix’s bench routinely swings game as one of the NBA’s premier units, thanks a lot to him and Gillespie.
In 603 minutes together, Phoenix is outscoring teams by 11.4 points per 100 possessions when the pair of Ighodaro and Gillespie is out there. There are more than 500 combinations of pairs across the league who have played at least 500 minutes together, and all of the highest net ratings with two reserves (if their squads are fully healthy) are via the Suns. Ighodaro is part of a few.
His phenomenal chemistry with Gillespie was almost too obvious to see from afar before they even started playing together. While Gillespie has started through the injury woes, he has been the first sub out, a clear effort to get him even more time with Ighodaro.
Ighodaro has been assisted by Gillespie 23 times, nine more than any other teammate. And in a ridiculous inverse, Ighodaro, as a center, has assisted Gillespie 21 times, only trailing Devin Booker for the most.
It’s a beautiful partnership to watch.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/gillespie-ighodaro.mp4“I love playing with him because he’s a high-level decision-maker, great passer and then he’s really quick in and out of setting screens. … Whenever I’m out there on the floor with him, I’m always trying to play the game with him,” Gillespie said.
Ighodaro, to Booker’s point and the primary desire of Brooks’ badgering, has showcased true positionless potential as a perimeter defender.
One of his signature moments of the season in a clutch situation was shutting down New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, all “6-foot-2” of one of the NBA’s masters of finding just enough room to get off his shot.
Lead ball-handlers are almost preprogrammed these days to seek out mismatches, and against a full switching look, that means bringing up the center to set the screen.
Brunson got his down three with under a minute to go. He went to a hesitation dribble, trying to get Ighodaro to flinch. No dice. The crossovers didn’t yield an advantage, so he quickly reset by stepping out before taking one more go, and thought he could either get an immediate step-back off or get Ighodaro to bite enough for a shooting foul. Ighodaro positioned himself perfectly to avoid contact, and Brunson got stuck in the air for the game-sealing turnover.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/f8d88220-77ca-5b86-a0a7-634f22d110bf_1280x720.mp4“He wants to be a dominant defender, he wants me to be a guy that switches on and people want to give the ball up,” Ott said of Ighodaro.
As he has started getting more comfortable with the beats of rhythm inside opposing offenses, Ighodaro is becoming more of a defensive playmaker. There is a lot of upside in that area for him to get better.
He’s only at 1.6 stocks (steals plus blocks) per game this season, but that will continue to trend up thanks to his explosive athleticism and natural instincts.
6’11 and 23 years old moving insane on the defensive end…
Holds opponents to 0.70 PPP in isolation. 98th percentile D-DPM. Suns elite defensively when he’s on the court. Some special defensive disruption stuff here. Worth paying attention to. pic.twitter.com/OZZvrGmeV7 t.co/btQIaOStqm
— Basketball University (@UofBasketball) January 29, 2026
The most improvement has come on the offensive end.
Ighodaro’s role is no secret. He is a “hub,” meaning he will get the ball 20-plus feet out from the basket and run a dribble-handoff, make a pass toward another action happening elsewhere or improvise.
That last one has been the most promising growth.
The nifty finds through small windows have always been there for Ighodaro as a passer. What’s emerging is the confidence to fake out the defending big.
Modern offenses have dozens of dribble-handoffs and ball-screens run a game, which a center can get lullaby’d to sleep into playing on the back line of it. There’s only a handful of 5s who will aggressively attack the basket with those spaces off just three or fewer dribbles.
While Ighodaro doesn’t have the tightest handle around, he’s seeing the floor better to know with his quickness that all he needs is one brief moment of hesitation from that defender before he evaporates him on his path to the rim.
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/oso-drives.mp4But the most obvious strides have been made as a screen-setter.
Along with the process of getting much stronger that all young big men must go through, Ighodaro is understanding how to use his combination of physicality and agility in those microsecond moments.
Every time I brought up his screen-setting to a teammate, that guy was glowing with praise. Gillespie referred to the screens as “awesome” and he’s not wrong. These players understand the minutia and craft that goes into becoming a reliable screen-setter. It is the most under-appreciated skillset in basketball.
The key is, most of them aren’t legal. The true masters of the art form are finding that grey area where they can get away with moving ever so slightly while setting it and maybe there’s a sneaky lil’ grab or two in there, too.
“I think damn-near 90% of the screens set in games are moving,” Ighodaro told Arizona Sports. “I think I do a good job of sprinting up and then trying to slow down at the very end, and then reading the defender.”
Grayson Allen expanded on what the Suns are looking for out of their screeners.
“I think one of the phrases the coaches have been using is ‘arrive alone,'” he told Arizona Sports. “And so for him, a guy whose usually got a speed advantage, the way he sprints up into screens from the baseline or just randomly in transition against teams with [more aggressive coverages], when he gets there quicker than the defending big, it messes them up and creates advantage for us. … When he does that, it’s a big thing.”
Ighodaro noted that a pivotal aspect is how to screen for each ball-handler. With Gillespie, it’s some more of the rapid-fire releases you saw earlier. For Booker, he has to stick hard and create separation for Booker from his defender.
A snippet of that:
arizonasports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/oso-screens.mp4There is plenty more for Ighodaro to get better at.
It starts at the free-throw line, where he is doing a good job of winding up with more consistently. But he is making only 47.8% of them through a shaky shooting form. Ighodaro worked hard at it in the summer and has made some tweaks, tweaks that aren’t consistent each night.
The long-term hope is that he eventually develops some type of jump shot, whether that’s down to just a midrange look or corner 3s. He’s already working at it.
Either would be a major help in expanding his offensive skillset for scoring beyond just his often-used floater. He has graded in the 99th and 95th percentile among bigs the last two seasons with the frequency of shots he has taken from the “short midrange,” where he is shooting a tolerable 44% this year.
Anyone at his experience level still has more work to do on defense, and Ighodaro’s next steps are becoming more versatile when it comes to schemes. Last year’s coaching staff had him playing a lot of drop coverage, something he never did in college. There are sprinkles of it this season because he can’t only be switching. Upping the aggro beyond that and using more hedges and flat-out traps are in the mix more too, reps that are invaluable with his stellar process of downloading the geometry of the floor in real time.
Even if those additional leaps never come or it takes longer than the Suns would hope, he’s still a big piece of what they do and one of the reasons why Phoenix is the surprise of this NBA season.
Whether Ighodaro knows that or not, he doesn’t expect to hear it from Brooks anytime soon.
“Oh, he’s never gonna tell me that. Just tough love. I know deep down that he cares about me,” Ighodaro said through a playful laugh and grin.
Follow @KellanOlson
Hence then, the article about how dillon brooks pestered suns oso ighodaro into a breakout year was published today ( ) and is available on Arizona sports ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How Dillon Brooks pestered Suns’ Oso Ighodaro into a breakout year )
Also on site :
- Anthony Joshua fights back tears as he opens up on loss of friends in car crash: ‘I was walking with giants’
- Carlos Alcaraz outlasts Alexander Zverev in 5 hour, 27 minute thriller to reach Australian Open final
- Europa League draw live: Nottingham Forest and Celtic to learn knockout play-off opponents