Fresh off a championship run with the Nuggets, Bruce Brown is leaving Denver for Indiana, per Alex Golden of Setting The Pace (Twitter link).
Brown is getting a significant pay raise from the Pacers, according to Adrian Wojnarowski and Malika Andrews of ESPN (Twitter link). He’ll sign a two-year contract worth $45M, agents Ty Sullivan and Steven Heumann tell ESPN’s duo.
According to Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star (Twitter link), Brown’s new deal will include a second-year team option, so it sounds like only the first year will be guaranteed. Still, it’s a huge pay bump for Brown, who had only earned a total of $15M across his first five NBA seasons.
Having signed with the Nuggets last summer following a two-year stint in Brooklyn, Brown averaged a career-best 11.5 points per night on .483/.358/.758 shooting in 80 games (28.5 MPG) this past season.
The 26-year-old also contributed 4.1 RPG and 3.4 APG while handling a variety of defensive assignments. In the postseason, he played the most minutes of any Denver reserve, bumping his scoring average to 12.0 PPG while shooting 51.1% from the floor.
Because Brown signed with the Nuggets just one year ago, the team only held his Non-Bird rights, which limited their maximum offer to about $7.8M, a 20% raise on his previous $6.5M salary. The club reportedly made that offer, but it didn’t come close to the deal the Pacers put on the table.
Brown was the No. 14 free agent on our top 50 list. His deal will come out of Indiana’s cap room. The team still projects to have nearly $15M in space after accounting for Brown’s contract tweets Yossi Gozlan of HoopsHype.
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