When the Nuggets bestowed Bruce Brown with his overdue ring in Denver, the cowboy was already carrying a piece of his former team with him every time he ambled into an arena.
Brown is a man of western taste. His preferred accessory is a stetson. His chosen jewelry, boot spurs. The 2023 NBA championship ring is, in fact, the first item he’s owned with diamonds. “It’s huge and sparkly,” he said, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans, the last time he was at Ball Arena as a member of the Indiana Pacers in January.
But just because Brown’s token of his time in Colorado isn’t bling doesn’t mean it isn’t outsized.
A gunslinger separated from his natural environment needs his confidence, after all.
Brown has a two-hour highlight compilation of every shot he made wearing a Nuggets uniform saved in his phone downloads. He chooses a portion of the video to watch before almost every game. Regardless of his playing status as he deals with a bout of knee inflammation, the Nuggets get to host their old companion one more time this season thanks to the mid-season trade that sent him from Indiana to Toronto. The Raptors visit Monday (7 p.m. MT). Brown has missed the last four games but is traveling with the team.
“Usually I go take a — I use the bathroom before the game,” he told The Denver Post, grinning. “And that’s when I sit there and watch it.”
Brown’s version of swagger and self-aggrandizement has always been hidden in his pregame routine. During a slump in college, longtime University of Miami coach Jim Larrañaga advised him to watch his own highlights to regain confidence. The tradition stuck when Brown went pro.
He only spent one year with the Nuggets, his third team in four NBA seasons (now up to five teams in five years), but Denver became the franchise with the most sentimental value. It’s where Brown won a championship and where his reputation soared as a rental sixth man, allowing him to decline his $6.8 million player option last summer and eventually sign with the Pacers for two years, $45 million.
“Bruce is a relatively young player, and to receive a contract like that, as I told him at the time: ‘You came here and helped us win a championship, the first one in franchise history, and we helped you create a market for yourself where you could get paid the money you’re (worth),’” Nuggets coach Michael Malone said. “That is what it’s all about. He helped us. We helped him. I love Bruce. I wish we had him for longer, obviously.”
Like most cowboys, Brown is a rough-and-tumble romantic. He still watches Nuggets games on nights when they play and his team doesn’t. He’s still active in a team group chat. He used to drink a glass of milk on team flights, so he texted a photo of him doing the same on the Pacers’ plane at one point this season.
And most of all, he still harnesses the power of those Denver highlights. They’re the most memorable and emotional of his young career: 358 made field goals in the 2022-23 regular season, then 90 more in the playoffs, including an offensive rebound and put-back with 1:30 remaining in NBA Finals Game 5 that turned out to be the title-winning basket.
Brown said the Nuggets’ video staff fixed up the video for him as a parting gift. The portion he chooses to watch before any given game is sometimes dependent on the opponent. If the Raptors are about to face the Suns, he might seek out clips from his 25-point performance in Game 5 of the second round.
Back in January, between pregame corner 3s at Ball Arena, Brown paused and pointed out the championship banner hanging in the same corner of the building to a Pacers assistant coach. It was the first moment Brown had thought to look for it.
“I didn’t think I was gonna cry, but I might,” he said a few minutes later as he finished warming up. “… That was the first time I got emotional. I looked up there, and I was like (crap), I’ve gotta keep it together.”
Then he jogged off to the visitors’ locker room, probably to find a private seat and relive the memories.
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