Nets fans loved Bruce Brown, right up until the team let the gritty guard go, amid speculation he was ostracized by one in every of the club’s stars.
Now all of them are gone — and Brown is on the verge of winning an NBA title.
The Nuggets will attempt to close out their first NBA championship Monday night in Denver, and Brown’s huge performance in Game 4 helped put them in that position — one by which the star-studded Nets had expected to be.
Brown is a single step from summiting the mountain his star-studded Nets so spectacularly did not climb.
“Bruce Brown within the fourth quarter was amazing,” Denver coach Michael Malone said after the Nuggets beat the Heat on Friday night to take a 3-1 lead within the NBA Finals. “They were giving Jamal [Murray] a lot attention that, ‘Let’s get Jamal off the ball, let Bruce make some plays.’ He was aggressive, got to the basket, made shots, and [Friday] was a powerful performance.”
When Nikola Jokic picked up his fifth foul with 9:24 left, Brown stepped up because the unlikely hero.
Miami doubled Murray, and Brown responded with 11 of his 21 points the remainder of the way in which.
“We knew they were going to attempt to get the ball out of Jamal’s hands. For me, I knew it was my time to be aggressive and check out to make plays, get to the rim,” said Brown, 26, adding, “doing it on this stage, it’s amazing.”
In that final, fateful fourth quarter, Brown shot 4-for-5 and snatched two rebounds in a four-minute span as Denver fended off a Miami rally.
Brown hit a layup to offer the Nuggets a 96-87 lead with Jokic on the bench.
Then got here a one-handed and-one to pad the result in 100-89 and a layup 22 seconds later.
Finally, Brown hit a brazen, heat-check 24-footer, on which Jokic went from irate when he took it to elated when he made it.
“He had a tremendous night, and he was really aggressive within the fourth quarter,” Jokic said.
“When he did a step-back 3, I desired to punch him,” Jokic added with amusing. “But when he made it, I used to be so blissful. … He was really good, aggressive, attacking, and never being petrified of the moment.”
Even the Nuggets hadn’t foreseen what Brown could do for them. However the fearlessness? That they knew about.
“I watched him within the playoffs last 12 months [with the Nets] against Boston, saw his impact of guarding guys like [Jayson] Tatum and [Jaylen] Brown, but his ability to facilitate, play with the ball, play off the ball, make shots,” Malone said. “And the one thing I find out about Bruce … he’s not afraid.”
At just 6-foot-4, Brown one way or the other defends not only guards, but in addition forwards. He adds rebounding that belies his height, is a solid passer, explosive driver and has made himself an adequate shooter. He’s even able to being the roll man.
The one thing more shocking than Denver getting him on a two-year, $13.2 million deal — with an opt-out this summer — is that the Nets let him walk.
Brown and fellow Nuggets Jeff Green and Deandre Jordan were all on the 2020-21 Nets, which lost a second-round Game 7 heartbreaker to the Bucks. Brown returned in 2021-22, after which the Nets let him go, his role taken by Ben Simmons.
But in an interview with Dan LeBatard last month, Brown said he “loves” Nets general manager Sean Marks, and it wasn’t the organization that wanted him gone.
“To be honest, I don’t think it was the Nets front office or organization who made that call, because from what I’ve heard they wanted me back,” said Brown, who wouldn’t name names. “I can’t say an excessive amount of about that.”
Kevin Durant clapped back at fan speculation he wanted Brown gone, saying in a since-delated tweet, “In some unspecified time in the future, Nets Twitter has to stop making s–-t up.”
Brown was a vocal vaccine proponent, doing promos for Pfizer that even ran during games. Kyrie Irving missed two-thirds of 2021-22 for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the Nets lost in the primary round of the playoffs. This season, they traded Durant and Irving in February.
Now after Durant’s Suns were eliminated and Irving’s Mavericks didn’t make the playoffs in any respect, Brown is one win away from getting the ring without them that he had expected to earn alongside them.
