3 takeaways from Detroit Pistons 113-109 win over Nets

2. Brown outplays Irving

With all three Pistons point guards out for the contest, Bruce Brown was the starting point guard. I did not enter this game with high expectations considering Brown’s offensive output this far, but he came to play tonight. It wasn’t efficient, shooting 8-20 for 22 points, but what he was able to do was give tremendous effort getting to the basket and looking to finish and pass out when necessary.

He got his lunch eaten at least twice by DeAndre Jordan at the rim. Brown did his best to summon his best Derrick Rose impression by being extremely aggressive on the fast break and attacking the rim at all costs.

He’s obviously a limited shooter as him and Drummond basically look the same shooting from 20 feet and beyond. Often times, both are facilitating offense with their back turned to the basket.

But, he had a thunderous dunk early in the first quarter to add to the Pistons run early on, at one point the Pistons had an 18-7 lead in the first. The Nets packed the paint a lot but Brown was able to slip through the cracks and find Drummond for shots close to the basket and committed zero turnovers.

Kyrie Irving also had a triple-double, but wasn’t as much of a factor scoring the ball like he normally is. Brown played solid defense on Irving and forced him to be more of a facilitator early in the game.

Does this game mean that Brown is meant to be a point guard? I’m not so sure. Brown can’t be expected to replicate this on a consistent basis and it’ll be better for this team to have a true point guard leading the offense. But, in a pinch, Brown played the game of his life, and that’s something to be very happy about.