After two years away, Bruce Brown’s first electrifying interaction with the home crowd this season cost him some wind.
The Nuggets guard chased Indiana’s Andrew Nembhard around a screen Saturday. He knocked the ball free while recovering back into position. Tim Hardaway Jr. was the beneficiary. The loose ball fell into his hands near the sideline.
Brown was already racing up the middle of the floor. He caught a quick pass ahead and beelined to the rim. But Pacers forward Pascal Siakam was hot in pursuit, and Isaiah Jackson was behind him for the rebound after Brown missed a contested layup.
No matter. Brown, whose momentum had carried him out of bounds, jumped back into the play, ripped the ball from the larger Jackson and went up with it again. Amped by his own relentlessness, he let out a scream toward the fans. It elicited one of the loudest reactions of the Nuggets’ entire four-game homestand last week, an emphatic reminder to Ball Arena: Bruce Brown is back.
Then the altitude welcomed him back.
“I should’ve never yelled. I was exhausted after that,” he said Monday. “I think if you watch the play, we went down on defense and we got a stop. We went back, and Julian (Strawther) tried to set a rip screen for me, and I told him no. I said, ‘Bro, you go. I’m not moving. I’m done.’ I was exhausted.”
That’s the type of bucket Brown is hunting. The Nuggets (7-2) have been less reliant on him to facilitate half-court offense every possession than they were in 2022-23, the first time Brown spent a year in Denver. Everyone from him to Jamal Murray to Peyton Watson has been lending a hand in second-unit initiation, representing Adelman’s by-committee approach to the task.
The more trustworthy ball-handlers he has at his disposal, the better it is for everyone’s workload, he believes.
That means Brown is playing without the ball more than three years ago.
“Last time here I was on ball. I was backup point guard. I was on ball all the time,” Brown said. “Now it’s like, hit-or-miss. Because we’re so deep, anyone can bring the ball up. And anybody can make plays.”
Brown, 29, understands that his usefulness offensively has always transcended what he can do with the ball. His eight-year NBA career has been an exercise in stretching the limits of versatility. The 6-foot-4 guard has even assumed the functions of a four-man, having been used as a roll option in Brooklyn.
He hasn’t been stripped of point guard responsibilities entirely in his Denver reunion. But he’s trying to focus on other ways to produce. “I can do other things,” he said. “I can get offensive rebounds. I can get out in transition. So I was trying that the last few games.” The exhilarating sequence against Indiana checked both boxes.
“I’m just trying to insert myself somehow, energy-wise,” he added. “And that was just a way I can score the ball, just being aggressive on the defensive end after a missed layup.”
Brown finished that game at a plus-23 with six points and seven rebounds. He’s averaging 6.3 points and 4.1 rebounds on the season in 20 minutes per game. It’s a little less than he played last time, but his importance to the rotation — and the fan base — hasn’t diminished, based on the arena-wide reaction to his put-back Saturday.
“Little different. I’m still getting adjusted to it,” he said of round two with Denver. “Obviously, when you come back to a situation where you were before, you think it’s gonna be exactly the same, but it’s not, obviously. But all I care about is winning. I’m trying to put another banner up. So I’m still getting adjusted to it. Sometimes you might see me come out of the game a little frustrated, just because I’m still getting used to it.”
He’s still getting reacclimated to that thin air, too, considering the jolt he sent through Ball Arena had the inverse effect on him for a couple of possessions.
Was it worth it to hype up the crowd, at least?
“Hell yeah,” he said. “It’s always worth it.”
Murray, Gordon status
After playing their first back-to-back of the season last weekend, the Nuggets are already about to play their second.
As they prepared for a quick trip through California to face the Kings and Clippers, Jamal Murray (calf tightness) and Aaron Gordon (hamstring maintenance) were full participants in a light practice Monday — “kind of like a fake practice, I guess,” Adelman called it. He’s contemplating how to use them in the two upcoming games, after both of them skipped the win over Indiana for precautionary reasons.
“I think we’ll kind of do what we did the other night, go through the whole (pregame) routine of it,” Adelman said. “You have to take into account that we’re playing a back-to-back on the road, so what’s best for them? The second night? Both games? The first night? And they’re both obviously different people. So (the team medical staff) will check in with them tomorrow, and we’ll go from there.”
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