Nets fans loved Bruce Brown, right up until the team let the gritty guard go, amid speculation he was ostracized by one 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 try 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 in which the star-studded Nets had expected to be.
Brown is a single step from summiting the mountain his star-studded Nets so spectacularly failed to climb.
“Bruce Brown in 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 in the NBA Finals. “They were giving Jamal [Murray] so much 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 an impressive performance.”
When Nikola Jokic picked up his fifth foul with 9:24 left, Brown stepped up as the unlikely hero.
Miami doubled Murray, and Brown responded with 11 of his 21 points the rest of the way.
“We knew they were going to try to get the ball out of Jamal’s hands. For me, I knew it was my time to be aggressive and try 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 give the Nuggets a 96-87 lead with Jokic on the bench.
Then came a one-handed and-one to pad the lead to 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 an amazing night, and he was really aggressive in the fourth quarter,” Jokic said.
“When he did a step-back 3, I wanted to punch him,” Jokic added with a laugh. “But when he made it, I was so happy. … He was really good, aggressive, attacking, and not being scared of the moment.”
Even the Nuggets hadn’t foreseen what Brown could do for them. But the fearlessness? That they knew about.
“I watched him in the playoffs last year [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 know about Bruce … he’s not afraid.”
At just 6-foot-4, Brown somehow defends not only guards, but also forwards. He adds rebounding that belies his height, is a solid passer, explosive driver and has made himself an adequate shooter. He’s even capable of being the roll man.
The only 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 decision, because from what I’ve heard they wanted me back,” said Brown, who wouldn’t name names. “I can’t say too much about that.”
Kevin Durant clapped back at fan speculation he wanted Brown gone, saying in a since-delated tweet, “At some point, 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 first round of the playoffs. This season, they traded Durant and Irving in February.
Now after Durant’s Suns were eliminated and Irving’s Mavericks did not make the playoffs at all, Brown is one win away from getting the ring without them that he had expected to earn alongside them.