Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray’s Nuggets still NBA’s best

It’s not the cowboy you miss so much as the ride. Bruce Brown didn’t just finish Nikola Jokic’s sentences. He finished lobs with exclamation points. He spun loose balls into gold, three seconds into two points.

On Bruce Brown Day at Ball Arena, a 117-109 Nuggets victory, the most Bruce Brown moment probably came with 2.9 seconds left in the first half — 2.9 seconds that should’ve been nothing.

Jamal Murray swished a free throw that put the Nuggets up 60-55. Brucey B responded by sprinting up the right boundary like Usain Bolt, snatching the relay heave at midcourt, then blowing past the Blue Arrow, who had two fouls at the time, for a layup that just beat the buzzer

“We gave Bruce a coast-to-coast drive on a Jamal made free throw,” Denver coach Michael Malone noted after the game, “which can’t happen.”

Honestly? They’re fine. More than fine, now that you mention it. At the season’s midway point, the defending NBA champs have the same record (28-13) after 41 games as they did a year ago. The best starting five in the league got four 20-point efforts and daggers from everybody. These Nuggets are the cruelest kind of cage fighters, lulling you into a false sense of security on the mat before calmly twisting an arm around your neck and squeezing you into the arms of Morpheus.

“That’s a great team,” said Brown, the former Nuggets sixth man who posted 18 points, 10 boards and six assists for Indiana on his personal ring day. “They’re the best team in the league until they get knocked off.”

And yet they’re kinda short on those Brucey B points, sometimes, aren’t they? The cheapies that come from runouts. The gifts you don’t realize you’ve missed until you see No. 11 streaking downcourt and stuffing them in somebody else’s piggy bank.

The Nuggets ranked fifth in the NBA in fast-break points during the 2022-23 regular season. Denver opens the week at a more modest 18th (13.3 per game) this winter. The Pacers, who secured Brown’s services with a mammoth two-year, $45-million free-agent contract this past summer, are second, at 17.5 per tilt.

“Everyone (with the Nuggets), they knew that at some point I was gonna leave last year,” Brown recalled after the game. “They cheered me on. They said,  ‘You (couldn’t) come back,’ because they knew I couldn’t turn down (the money) I got. But I’m happy that they’re still in my life.”

In a divorce nobody wanted, the bad guy was the system. The salary cap tied the Nuggets’ purse strings tight. The Pacers, meanwhile, found themselves sitting on a chest of gold coins they needed to chuck at somebody decent. Brucey B was better than that, of course — a plugger overdue for a payday. Good for him.

Brown is a New Englander with a Wyoming soul. He still fits this town like an old pair of boots, even though his right one was being ornery at his locker stall after the game.

In a bit of serendipitous scheduling, Brown got a window to visit the National Western Stock Show on Saturday — “watching the real cowboys,” he cracked — before an emotional pregame video tribute on Sunday tugged heartstrings and stoked old fires.

Malone walked over from the home bench and extended a warm embrace. No. 11 looked like a kid at Christmas as ex-teammate Kentavious Caldwell-Pope presented him with that ring, 89 rubies and 16 carats he helped make a reality.

“I think it’s huge and it’s sparkly,” Brown noted later. “This is my first thing with diamonds on it.”

If the hoops gods are kind, it won’t be the last. Because when the current Nuggets surrounded Brown near the scorer’s table, smothering him with love, it felt as if he’d never left.

“It was more than what I expected,” the Pacers swingman reflected. “I didn’t know that the crowd is gonna cheer like that. I almost started crying, but (held back), because I told one of the fans I wasn’t gonna cry. So it was tough. I love it, though.”

Brown had sauntered into Ball Arena on Sunday morning wearing his trademark cowboy hat, then re-introduced himself to the Joker as only Brucey B could.

While the two-time MVP was practicing treys at the top of the key before the game, Brown snuck up behind, closed quickly, and playfully swatted away the Joker’s shot with a cheeky right hand.