Brown’s Out Had Little To Do With Nets Crash

During his two seasons in Brooklyn, Bruce Brown was easy to root for, the quintessential Swiss Army knife role player who put everything into whatever assignment he was given, even if they were above his pay grade as a 6-foot 4 slashing guard. Body up to guard bigger opponents? Check. Act as the roll man after setting ball screens? Check.

He did it all with the energy and effort required of a former second round pick (No. 42 overall by Detroit in 2018). On a team that featured superstars Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden. Brown was more than willing to do the dirty work of “getting after it.”

As such, I, like many Nets fans, wished him well when he signed with Denver last summer as a free agent. There certainly won’t be any grudges if he and his new club complete their journey next week by winning the NBA Finals.

However, let’s dispel the narrative that allowing Brown to walk was an epic fail by the Nets organization, particularly General Manager Sean Marks. Brown inked a 2-year, $13 million contract (with a player option this offseason), which he claimed in a recent interview with Dan LeBatard was the only offer he received in the marketplace.

There was a reason for that, the same reason why he has been able to fit in so well in Denver. The fact is that Brown can still be, to generously put it, loosely guarded outside the paint. Credit him for getting his three-point rate up to 40.4% during his last season in Brooklyn and 35.8% this season, but even that improvement hasn’t altered how opponents have been able to structure their defenses. NBA.com’s tracking had all but 19 of Brown’s combined 348 attempts taken with at least four feet of room from his nearest defender over the past two seasons.

You need a certain lineup configuration to accommodate such a player, since having multiple non-shooters on the floor makes it awfully tough for the offense to attack the paint, as Brown’s man is already in closer proximity to act as a help defender. In Brooklyn’s first-round playoff loss to Boston last year, the Celtics were able to swarm KD and Kyrie with extra bodies, successfully betting that Brown wouldn’t beat them if left open on the perimeter, even if he did convert on 6-of-14 three-point attempts in the four games.

Compounding matters, the Nets have mostly relied on the classic lobs-and-blocks type of big man, with Nic Claxton the latest incarnation. When Brooklyn went to starting undersized Blake Griffin at center for a period to better spread the floor, he of course went into a massive shooting slump and ended up being benched.

Denver, though, happens to boast a historically gifted center in Nikola Jokic. The two-time NBA MVP can dominate from anywhere he’s stationed with his shooting, ball-handling, and, most impressively, his passing. He is especially effective operating above the free throw line, where he can manipulate defenses and then attack with any of the many tools in his bag, even capably stepping back to shoot from behind the three-point line.

The Nuggets offense is tailor made for a player with Brown’s skillset, especially his savviness as a cutter. With Jokic and guard Jamal Murray, Brown has even less of a need to have plays run for him. Per NBA.com, he finished just 11 plays this season as the pick-and-roll roll man after 57 such actions last season in Brooklyn. Brown has been getting his buckets in other ways--for instance, he led the Nuggets in fast break points.

Brown’s most impactful value, obviously, is his doggedness on the defensive end. Per NBA.com, he posted his team’s lowest defensive field goal percentage allowed as the nearest defender both last season in Brooklyn and this season with Denver (25 games minimum).

Still, I’d argue it was a different defection to Denver—versatile forward Jeff Green the previous offseason—that did more to debilitate Brooklyn’s pursuit of a championship than did Brown’s.

I don’t care if Green, at 36, has been showing obvious signs of decline in terms of shooting efficiency and athleticism (though he can still end the lives of rim protectors with poster dunks on occasion) since signing Denver’s 2-year, $9 million free agent contract in August 2021. That Marks instead opted to utilize his taxpayer mid-level exception on guard Patty Mills turned out to be a grave mistake, even when considering Mills’ hot streak that saved some Nets wins until it expired at the 2022 All Star break.

For Green was a highly valuable complementary piece with size who did not crush Brooklyn’s offensive spacing. In his sole Nets season, he averaged 11 points in 27 minutes per game on a 49/41/78 shooting split. Who’s to say his numbers would have dropped so precipitously had he remained in Brooklyn?

If you really want to kill the Nets for anything, it’s for what I call their original sin, which was accepting Ben Simmons as the main return piece in the trade that sent Harden to Philadelphia last season.

Simmons was expected to be a significantly bigger, more athletic, and better overall version of Brown, for which he was paid nearly $35.5 million this season. Remember, had the Nets matched Denver’s offer, it would have cost them exponentially more in luxury taxes, with Clutchpoints.com estimating the total 2022-23 tab to be approximately $30 million. That’s a lot to pay for a redundancy.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Brooklyn needed such an insurance policy, since Simmons has been a figurative basket case, both mentally and physically, since his arrival. Back woes sidelined him for the remainder of the 2021-22 campaign and then hindered him for much of this past season before he was finally shut down after playing just 42 games.

When he did suit up, Simmons was a shell of the player who earned two NBA All-Star berths in Philly. The physical rust wasn’t the only problematic issue; he appeared leery of attacking the basket as if he were afraid of creating contact that could send him to the free throw line, where he shot a tick under 44% this season.

Wasting a max contract slot on such a negative force came back to bite Brooklyn when Durant was felled by a knee injury in January. It was all downhill from there, with Marks blowing the superstar window up by dealing Irving and then KD in advance of the trade deadline for pieces that couldn’t possibly compete in the postseason. The Nets went down meekly to the Sixers in a four-game first-round sweep.

That Simmons still has two more seasons left on his deal makes Brown’s contributions to a title contender more irksome to Nets fans, though they seem to understand that they shouldn’t take it out on Brown—I’d gather that most will be happy for him if he gets a ring. That said, Brown’s departure was a minor factor in Brooklyn’s crash to irrelevancy over the course of this past season.