Philadelphia 76ers: Bruce Brown is a young man’s P.J. Tucker

P.J. Tucker is probably going to be the Philadelphia 76ers‘ big addition in free agency.

Now how, exactly, is that going to happen? Frankly, only Daryl Morey really knows, as Tucker reportedly wants a contract in the three-year, $30 million range, and to afford such a deal, the Sixers would need to free up right around $12 million to be cap compliant.

But just because that deal feels incredibly likely doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee; trading for Eric Gordon looked like a high-priority play heading into the draft, and Morey opted to instead make a deal for De’Anthony Melton, who is sort of like a decade younger version of EG with a far longer runway to remain a premier NBA performer.

If the Philadelphia 76ers want to be in a similar direction and invest in a P.J. Tucker-type player who was born in the 1990s, they could do a lot worse than Bruce Brown, who actually has quite a bit of experience playing alongside James Harden from their shared run in Brooklyn.

Bruce Brown is an intriguing 1B forward for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Bruce Brown came into the NBA as a point guard. He played point for the Miami Hurricanes alongside eventual San Antonio Spurs draftee Lonnie Walker IV, played guard both on and off the ball with the Detroit Pistons over his first two seasons in the association and, upon being traded to the Brooklyn Nets in a three-team deal that also featured Luke Kennard and Landry Shamet on draft night, the 42nd overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft likely thought he’d be a guard there too… except that isn’t what happened.

No, in a very interesting twist of fate, Brown largely transitioned off the ball as a member of the Nets and fast became a favorite of James Harden when the three-time scoring champion was reunited with Kevin Durant in BK.

Routinely tasked with playing a weird, quasi-big role despite standing an inch shorter than Harden, which never didn’t look ridiculous, Brown developed into a deceptively good screener, a good pick-and-roll man, and an effective cutter equally adept at driving with the ball in his hands and catching a well-placed lob. While Brown’s effectiveness alongside Harden took a step back in 2021-22 from a Net Rating standpoint, dropping seven points from a 2.7 to a -5.7, the duo shared the court for the third-most minutes of any Harden-featured pairing and helped to hold it down for the 36 games the team had to play without their Big 3 all on the court together.

Sidebar: Harden, Durant, and Irving shared the court for exactly eight games in 2021-22, going 4-4 over that run. Crazy what could have been.

Despite low-key calling out Harden via a post-game quote about harmony in the locker room after he was traded away – if he only knew the drama ahead – it’s hard to argue that Brown’s stock didn’t get elevated considerably by playing alongside the Hall of Famer guard, as he went from a vet minimum kind of guy to a legitimate candidate to sign for a taxpayer mid-level exception this summer, be that in Brooklyn or elsewhere.

Considering Ben Simmons will presumably play the “Bruce Brown role” in Brooklyn next season, it’s safe to say the Nets may have other needs on their mind more pressing than a 6-foot-4 forward perfectly suited to play alongside a guard like Harden.

But do you know who could use a player with that sort of skill set? Well, that would be the Philadelphia 76ers, who are likely to spend big on a player in Tucker who is just one inch taller with a three-inch longer wingspan but vastly similar games at both ends of the court. Both are effort guys who play the lanes, fight for rebounds, and block balls thrown up in their general vicinity; while neither player is what you would call prolific outside shooters in terms of attempts or efficiency, both make 40-plus percent of their shots from deep last season and are particularly good in catch-and-shoot situations.

Really, the only thing Tucker has over Brown, other than 508 games of NBA experience, is weight, as he weighs 245 pounds and Brown is only 202. But hey, if Brown’s market is a tad lighter than some may expect and he was to sign with a team like the Sixers for $6.339 million, something tells me he might be very hungry indeed; hungry enough to become a legit one-through-four defender.

Will the Philadelphia 76ers bypass the likes of Nicolas Batum, Otto Porter Jr., and yes, Bruce Brown in favor of P J. Tucker? More likely than not, the answer to that question is a resounding yes, but frankly, it doesn’t have to be. The reason players like Tucker and Eric Gordon were so good for the Houston Rockets in the first place was that they were overlooked in free agency and provided great value versus the expectations. While a reunion would be nice, so would be finding the next Tucker or EG, be that Brown or some other player currently flying under the radar.