As Bruce Brown Jr.
The Nuggets were up by 14 with a little over a minute remaining, a time when typically players are passing and wasting time from the clock.
It was that kind of night for Brown in Game 4, where he scored 11 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter to seal the win for the Nuggets.
On a team whose star player in Jokic was announced as a second round pick while a Taco Bell commercial played during ESPN’s broadcast of the NBA Draft in 2014, Brown is another player on the Nuggets who soared to heights many didn’t expect.
After the Nuggets finish celebrating their championship, Brown — who will be a free agent this summer if he opts out of his contract — will likely have some more celebrating to do.
Brown did his own post-victory press conference with the Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon sitting next to him.
“Can I say that I envisioned him scoring 11 points on the road in Game 4 of the Finals? I can’t say that,” Nuggets coach Micahel Malone said of Brown’s fourth-quarter scoring that same night.
Caputo pointed to Brown’s first year at Miami when he scored 30 points against the University of North Carolina, who played in the national championship that season, and when he scored 25 points against Duke University less than a month later.
Brown, who just wrapped up his fifth NBA season, played with the Brooklyn Nets for two seasons before joining the Nuggets in free agency last summer.
In the 2021 postseason, he guarded Milwaukee star forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, and scored in double digits in multiple games as the Nets nearly beat the Bucks in seven games.
SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell ranked Brown as the 16th-best player available in this free agent class, and Bobby Marks, who was a former assistant general manager for the Nets, expects Brown to be offered at least $12.2 million, which is the non-taxpayer mid-level exception that teams can offer players if they are above the salary cap.