No one player has had a bigger impact on the Phoenix Suns and their surprisingly solid start this season than Dillon Brooks. The 29-year-old immediately becoming the emotional engine of this group.
Devin Booker remains the franchise cornerstone, and on some nights Mark Williams and Collin Gillespie are more important, but Brooks is the only player who can regularly step into a larger role.
Brooks deserves first time All-Star nod
Which is why the Canadian international should be an All-Star for the first time this season, because he ticks so many of the boxes required to do so.
The biggest knock on certain selections is that they don't impact winning basketball enough, but this is a Suns team that wasn't expected to win more than 20 games by most this season.
They're at 19-16 and the calendar hasn't even flipped yet, and the importance of Booker to that cannot be understated. With Jalen Green out and Booker at times inconsistent, it is Brooks who has been there for the team.
He loves being the villain for opposing fans and has mixed it up with LeBron James (several times) and Draymond Green (a cautious tale for the Brooks experience) already this season.
Brooks is about a lot more than just the eye test and saying he has helped his team to win games however. They're an above average defensive team (12th, 113.7) in part because of his impact.
He takes the second most shot attempts each night (17.4), just below Booker's output (18). That is unsurprisingly a career high, as is the 7.2 efforts from deep.
He may be connecting on only 34.3 percent of those shots, but there is still time for the uptick in attempts to be rewarded with making more of them, especially when Green is out there with him.
Putting up 21.8 a night is obviously a career high, and a huge improvement of his career average of 14.5. He has also become the personification of what head coach Jordan Ott wants this group to be.
So with his own numbers having increased, the Suns been better than anticipated and Brooks being the second best player on their roster, not to mention not being afraid to mix it up with star players, how could he not get selected?
He certainly won't get in on the fan vote, he is a villain for a reason, but if the coaches appreciate all he does the way that they should, then Brooks will be a first time All-Star.
This is a guy that The Valley wasn't a fan of, Booker either, and who have taken to him in less than half a season. Hard not to be impressed by that fact as well. Do the right thing and get him in there.