All-Star snub softened as Dillon Brooks wins award for first time

The Phoenix Suns might be one of the surprise packages of the season, but the All-Star rosters don't entirely reflect that fact. Devin Booker making the midseason exhibition for the fifth time, with no other Suns selected.

We now know that Dillon Brooks won't be joining him in Los Angeles. Not that he cares, Brooks felt Booker was the right choice all along anyway. Truly the perfect teammate.

Brooks named best in the West for first time

It gets better for the 30-year-old, as on Monday he was announced as the Western Conference Player of the Week. The first time he has ever received that award.

This might not seem like much, but it is everything could have asked for in his first season in Phoenix. Let us not forget that he has spent his whole career out West as well.

So to win this for the first time is small vindication for the Houston Rockets trading him and Jalen Green for Kevin Durant last offseason.

Not that Brooks himself was ever bothered by that, in fact he understood it, although Durant as you might expect couldn't resist taking a shot at Brooks after his career high 40 point game recently. All love though we're sure.

But Brooks was the veteran who quietly (or not so quietly depending on how he was feeling on the night) helped settle a Rockets franchise that struggled for direction in the wake of James Harden's departure.

Being given his flowers for helping the Suns do the same thing, albeit with more help in the form of Booker and Green (the rare occasions he is available but do not call him Bradley Beal) feels right.

Prior to that Brooks was also made a scapegoat for the shortcomings of the Memphis Grizzlies, and if we're going to give him any stick here it is because the way his game toes the line was not yet refined.

But he left Memphis under a cloud that felt unfair even then, not that Suns fans cared. Brooks was a villain even to The Valley at that point, but so much has changed.

Which has culminated in him winning Player of the Week for the franchise. It also feels apt that it would be he who wins it before Green, Mark Williams and even Collin Gillespie.

All three have had their moments in Phoenix too, but there is something about the singularity with which Brooks attacks every single game that had to be rewarded. Now it has.