Chillin' villain Dillon Brooks ready to bring the noise for Canada at FIBA World Cup

After a tumultuous season that ended poorly, to the point where the team that drafted him and where he’d developed into an all-NBA defender through sheer force of will was content to simply let him leave in free agency, Dillon Brooks decided he needed a break.

From the noise, from the business of the NBA and from the craziness that life can be. He came home and laid low.

“I’ve been chilling. I’ve working out, making sure I get my body right, keep my body right the whole time so I don’t have no drop off,” Brooks told me this week after training with the Canadian men’s senior national team in advance of the FIBA World Cup. “And then just focusing mostly on myself, staying off social media, working on my game, doing what I have to do.”

The pause was necessary after a season in which Brooks found himself – and more than once put himself – in the eye of the NBA’s media and social media hurricane. It’s something that takes getting used to.

One way to clear his head and reset has been to decide to play for the Canadian senior men’s national team, lending his trademark competitiveness, toughness and defensive acumen to their twin goals of winning a medal at FIBA Basketball World Cup and qualifying for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

It’s a homecoming, and a refreshing one.

“This is where it all started, and there’s no politics,” said Brooks, who led Canada’s U-19 team in scoring on the way to a 6-1 record and a fifth-place finish at the World Championships in the summer of 2015, and made his senior men’s debut that same summer in the Pan Am Games. “We’re here to play for our country, there’s no set narrative or any of that. I can’t wait to play with my guys and put on that white and red, and play hard.”

Brooks always plays hard. His willingness to use his powerful six-foot-seven, 240-pound frame to knock the NBA’s best players off their game and up the ante with his refusal to pay them the kind of respect – on and off the floor – that they’re used to has made him one the league’s few black hats with his "Dillon the villain" persona, even if, in person, when the lights are off, he’s as approachable and genuine as they come.

Did he go too far this past season as he got into wars of words with one of the NBA’s biggest talkers – Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green – or tried to get in the head of The King himself, LeBron James, before the Memphis lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the playoffs?

Maybe or maybe not, but what’s done is done, and Brooks seems like he can handle the fallout.

“Yeah, it still trails. There’s guys out there who like to use social media to get clicks,” he said of his wild spring, when it seemed barely a day passed when his comments or comments about him weren’t roaring around the Internet. “They want to use someone’s name to get their clicks up or whatever, but I don’t worry about that. I know it’s going to be going on for the rest of my career. So, I just have to find a way to play through it and, I guess, overcome it.”

It helps that Brooks emerged relatively unscathed, and stronger for it with a new team, a new city and a fully guaranteed four-year, $86-million contract with the Houston Rockets. After the Grizzlies cut ties with him, naysayers were saying Brooks’ next job would be in China. Ummm, nope.

It turns out big, physical wings can set the tone for a team with their tenacity and defense remain in demand in the NBA. What a surprise.

Brooks is excited for a fresh start, playing along former Toronto Raptor Fred VanVleet, who was the other high-profile free agent signing the Rockets made as they try to elevate a young team to relevancy.

“I went out there (to Houston) a couple of weeks ago, had a great time, got to meet a lot of people there and I can’t wait to get it going,” Brooks said.

But first there’s a job to do with Canada, and Brooks is equally excited to be in a gym where he can be himself and among teammates who have known each other since their teens.

“Everyone that’s in the building, you came across when you were younger, grew up with or played against or with when you played up (an age group),” said Brooks on Thursday, after the senior men wrapped up their third day of two-a-day practices in advance of a closed intrasquad scrimmage slated for Friday. “It’s a family environment and everybody is here to win, get better and do something special for the country.”

Brooks should be a significant part of that. Canada is deep at the wing position and should be effective playing a high-pressure, switching brand of defense, but having the likes of Brooks and Oklahoma City Thunder stopper Lu Dort – another big, strong, physical defender – as options to throw at opponents’ top offensive players will give whatever defense approach new Canadian head coach Jordi Fernandez installs some very sharp teeth.

“It makes the system look better. Whatever I say, it just looks much better, so I am happy to have them and I’m lucky,” said Fernandez. “Like you said, we can be a very good defensive team and so far we are showing that we will (be). … The ball pressure with those guys is going to be a big key for us.”

International basketball is known for being more liberal with how the game is officiated away from the ball, allowing for more clutching, grabbing and general physicality on defense.

It should play – quite literally – to Brooks’ strength.

“It’s being early, before the possession starts, before the play gets called, you know, getting into guys, re-routing them so they don’t have easy lanes and you mess up their angles,” he said. “And then, as well, banging in the paint with bigs that are boxing out or if we got a smaller guy in there boxing out, I’ll help out and hit him as well. So, I can’t wait. I hope they don’t call too many fouls.”

Regardless, expect Brooks to be in the mix, raising the temperature and bringing his teammates to the fight. It’s a role he was born for, plays expertly and could be the difference as Canada tries to make noise on the world stage.

Count on Brooks to make himself heard.