Suns have put Dillon Brooks in an impossible position to succeed

The Phoenix Suns have won their last couple of games, and they have done so without Dillon Brooks. Despite starting the season looking like the answer to all of their problems on the defensive end, the team have actually trended in the right direction while both he and Jalen Green have been sidelined through injury.

Right now the Suns sit 12th in defensive rating (113.7) - having been as low as 29th a few short weeks ago - while they are in the top 10 in transition defense. The awesome display by Ryan Dunn against Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs was a big boost, but it feels like we've been here before with the second year forward.

Brooks will be blamed for any defensive slide when he returns.

It seems inevitable then that when Brooks is finally ready to return, the Suns are going to take a dip on the defensive end. This won't even be all his fault either, as Dunn may have to go to the bench in order for him to get his starting spot back. With Green also due to make his debut any day now - although we've been saying that for a while - there is bound to be imbalance with the starting group.

So although the combination of Green and Devin Booker will lead to a higher offensive output - when you combine both of them with Brooks minus Dunn - there is going to be a slip defensively. When that happens, it will be easy to point to the inclusion of Brooks once again as the reason why the Suns allow more points, because this is how they started the season.

But it is a lot more nuanced than that, and fans need to remember that Brooks was also playing with Oso Ighodaro for some of his minutes before he went down. Ighodaro is now coming off the bench and in his place Mark Williams - an actual center - has been one of the standout performers relative to expectations in the early goings of the campaign.

Collin Gillespie also continues to go from strength-to-strength, and although he is not known for his defensive abilities, he has improved even in the short time since Brooks has been unavailable. Not helping matters either is the fact that the 29-year-old was attempting the most field goals to begin the season, and this cannot continue alongside the inevitable slide in defensive numbers.

The Suns need Dillon Brooks in order to be the best version of themselves this season, and although that means starting and finishing games, how he plays and how he is perceived both need to change. He's a different kind of defender to Ryan Dunn, and any let up defensively cannot be blamed entirely on him. Only it will be, which is why his groin injured happened at the worst possible time.