If you stopped a Brooklyn Nets play on offense from early 2021, you almost could've heard the record scratch as Bruce Brown became the NBA's version of the "Yep, that's me" meme.
How did Brown, a 6-foot-4 guard who had started at point guard for the Detroit Pistons the previous season, end up screening for some of the league's top superstars and rolling to the basket -- the typical province of players several inches taller?
The answer to that question helped explain how the Nets found their stride last year and could play a role as the Golden State Warriors contend for a title this season. Brown "damn near reinvented a new position," says Gary Payton II, now playing a similar role for the Warriors after years of languishing on the NBA's fringes while excelling in the G League.
And while it takes a rare skill set and mindset to play the role as Brown and Payton have, it could end up setting a template for other players as increasing numbers of skilled shooters enter the league.
With that in mind, let's answer the question. How did this phenomenon begin?
How Brown and the Nets discovered super small ball
When Brooklyn first acquired Brown in November 2020 for a second-round pick and forward Dzanan Musa, who the Pistons quickly waived, it wasn't clear to Brown how he fit with Nets stars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Conventional strategy would be to surround them with 3-and-D role players, and while Brown's defense was up to the task, shooting had always been the weakest aspect of his game.
Despite shooting 34% on 3s in 2019-20, his second NBA season since being drafted out of Miami in the second round, Brown had attempted just 96 triples in 58 games -- far lower volume than existing Brooklyn role players like Spencer Dinwiddie, Joe Harris and Caris LeVert. With them in place, Brown saw just 13 total minutes of action over the Nets' first seven games of 2020-21.
A season-ending ACL injury for Dinwiddie helped get Brown into the rotation, but it was Brooklyn's trade for Harden 13 games into the season that redefined his role. The Nets sent out starting center Jarrett Allen in the deal, leaving them short on big men. Meanwhile, the addition of Harden -- who's more comfortable defending bigger opponents than on the perimeter -- created an opening for Brown's defensive skills.
Having Brown screen for the three Brooklyn stars was a natural response to how opponents were guarding him.
"They were always going to put the worst defender on me," Brown says, "so for us to get an advantage, I would go up and set screens for James, KD or Ky. Then they started doubling the ball, so I would roll and get wide-open layups and floaters. That just stuck the rest of the season."
Mike D'Antoni, an assistant coach for the Nets last year working with his former Phoenix Suns star Steve Nash, has always kept an open mind to using players how they naturally play. The coaching staff saw value in Brown's unique role.
"Bruce is not a great outside shooter," D'Antoni says, "so it's hard to space with him, especially when you have players like Kevin, James and Kyrie. And any time there's a pick-and-roll you know they're going to double. Now you put Bruce in it and he gets the short pass and he's got those playmaking qualities that he can make a play to the shooters or shoot floaters, get to the rim."
According to Second Spectrum, Brown had set just two screens for ball handlers all season prior to the Harden trade. It wasn't until February 2021 that it became a regular part of Brooklyn's offense. By the middle of that month, Brown essentially became the Nets' big man.
Playing big at 6-foot-4
On Feb. 13, 2021 when Brooklyn played at Golden State, Nash unveiled an unconventional lineup. He replaced center DeAndre Jordan, who had started all but one game since the Nets traded Allen, with Brown. In some ways, the lineup was reminiscent of the ones D'Antoni had deployed featuring Harden with the Houston Rockets the previous season, which included no starter taller than the 6-foot-7 Robert Covington.
Although the 6-foot-10 Durant gave the Nets one player of traditional frontcourt height, and he and Harden defended opposing big men, the presence of four players with guard skills allowed Brown to function as the team's center on offense. He could set screens and roll to the rim without having to worry about another big man clogging the paint. In that role, Brown's guard skills came in handy.
"I was always on the other end [of the pick-and-roll]," he says. "I was always handling the ball and making the play, so that was my first time being a big. That kind of helped me because I knew exactly what I wanted the big to do."
When opponents double-teamed Brooklyn's star ball handlers, Brown either had a free path to the rim or the ability to read the defense and kick to an open 3-point shooter. The result, according to Second Spectrum, was that pick-and-rolls with Brown rolling to the basket were more efficient than those involving either of the Nets' traditional big men (Jordan and Nic Claxton).
Brown's unconventional success earned him the role of captain on ESPN's Zach Lowe's team of 2021 "Luke Walton All-Stars," which features players starring in their under-their-radar roles. Lowe wrote that Brown "was almost inventing a new position: 'rover,' or 'center fielder.'"
Though it wasn't what he set out to do in the NBA, Brown appreciates the idea that he has invented something. "I don't think anybody else my height has done it before," Brown says.
It turned out he wasn't the only one who could do it.
Payton gets his opportunity
From afar, Payton noticed Brown's role in the Nets' offense. And it looked familiar. At 6-foot-3, Payton had struggled to stick in the NBA despite his defensive skills because he was neither a traditional point guard nor a capable spot-up shooter.
Payton starred in the G League, where he was able to play less conventionally but had seen action in just 71 NBA games with four different teams entering the 2021-22 season.
"I just needed an opportunity," Payton says. "I can do the same exact thing that Bruce does and help his team win. I just need the opportunity. Golden State was smart enough to see it and they took a chance."
Payton joined the Warriors in April 2021, originally on a pair of 10-day contracts, but with the team in the middle of a playoff push there was little time to incorporate his skill set. He saw just 40 minutes of action over 10 games last season.
By the start of training camp this year, Payton had the ability to showcase what he can do in pickup games and build more chemistry with Golden State's stars. Like Brown in Brooklyn, the Warriors' shooting and playmaking enabled Payton to defend guards while playing closer to the hoop on offense.
After winning a battle in training camp to make the roster ahead of more experienced NBA guards Avery Bradley and Langston Galloway, Payton has become a key reserve in Golden State, playing more minutes (1,182) than his first five NBA seasons combined (808). When the Nets played the Warriors on Jan. 29, Brown recognized the similarity in their games.
"He played exactly the same way that I did last year with all the shooters that they have. He doesn't shoot it as well as them, but he can shoot it," Brown says of Payton, who is making a career-high 36.4% of his 3s this season.
"[Defenses] kinda disrespect him. So he's just making an impact on the game. He has Steph [Curry] -- they're going to double him most of the time. [Payton] uses his athleticism at the rim to finish and get steals. He's just a defensive menace."
An evolving role
Brooklyn's small-ball lineups with Durant as the only player taller than 6-foot-6 proved short-lived, but the Nets found a way to use Brown like a big man throughout last season. The arrival of Blake Griffin as a starting center who could space the floor kept Brown playing against bigger opponents all the way through Brooklyn's postseason run, when he found himself defended by Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez during a second-round loss.
The 2021-22 season has been a slightly different story for Brown. With Harris sidelined since undergoing ankle surgery in mid-November and now out for the season, the Nets don't have the same kind of shooting prowess. (They rank 28th in 3-point attempts and 11th in 3-point percentage after finishing 12th and second, respectively, in 2020-21.)
As a result, Brown has played more like a conventional perimeter player, knocking down a career-high 39.8% of his 3-point attempts.
So far, Brown and Payton are mostly a group of two. Just four players in the camera-tracking era -- which dates back to the 2013-14 season -- listed at 6-foot-4 or shorter have rolled to the basket on at least 100 on-ball screens in a season, according to Second Spectrum tracking.
Besides Brown in each of the past two seasons, the others are Jae'Sean Tate of the Rockets -- who has always been an undersized big man rather than a guard playing like one -- and sharpshooter Ben McLemore in 2019-20 with D'Antoni in Houston. Still, the idea seems to be catching on. Among all players 6-foot-4 or shorter, rolls to the basket from on-ball screens are up by nearly 8% this season, an all-time high in the tracking era.
Brown pointed to the slightly taller Matisse Thybulle (listed at 6-foot-5) as somebody who could play a similar role with Harden after Brooklyn's trade sending him to the Philadelphia 76ers at the deadline.
While he's got the size of a big man at 6-foot-11, Brown's new teammate Ben Simmons could eventually take advantage of the same situation with the Nets to be on the screening side of pick-and-rolls rather than running them as a ball handler.
Even as more floor-spacing big men open things up for smaller players to go inside, playing like a big man at the height of a guard is not for everybody.
"It's definitely hard," Brown says, recalling the physical toll playing against Lopez and screening P.J. Tucker caused him in the 2021 playoffs. "It's not an easy thing to do.
"You've got to understand: Guards want to be guards. They don't want to be bigs, so it's hard to tell a guard to go play big and not hurt their pride. Some people just can't do that. I just wanted to win and stay on the floor, so if I needed to do that, I'll do anything."