Photo credit: Trung Ho / TrungHo.ca
Raptors 905 point guard and Toronto Raptors two-way player Lorenzo Brown has been named the 2017-18 G League Most Valuable Player, the league announced Tuesday.
🗣 MVP! MVP! MVP!
Congrats, @Zo_Brown! #RoadToTheSix pic.twitter.com/9jWF4oxUzq
— Raptors 905 (@Raptors905) April 10, 2018
Brown led the 905 to the third-best record in the G League this year at 31-19, proving instrumental along the way. To wit, the team was 25-7 in games he appeared in and 6-12 while he was either with the parent club Raptors or injured (he missed nearly a month around the All-Star break with an ankle sprain). What’s more, the 905 were 7.6 points per-100 possessions better on offense with Brown on the floor and 9.6 points per-100 possessions better overall.
A fourth-year NBA veteran and fifth-year G Leaguer, Brown paced the circuit in assist percentage (46.3 percent), ranked second in assists per-game (8.9), and finished ninth in Value Over Replacement Player, fourth in Player Impact Estimate, sixth in Box Plus-Minus, and 30th in Win Shares despite only appearing in 32 games. He was paramount to their offensive attack,averaging 18.8 points on 54.2-percent true-shooting, chipped in 5.2 rebounds and 1.8 steals.
Now, Brown has the opportunity to add more hardware, as he’s helped lead the 905 back to the G League Championship. The 905 are down 1-0 nothing in the best-of-three series and tip off Game 2 tonight, where Brown is sure to be key to the gameplan at both ends. Should the 905 complete the comeback, he’d be in a position to follow Pascal Siakam as G League Finals MVP, although the 905 will have a number of strong candidates if they take the series.
Brown has also chipped in at the NBA level this year, averaging 9.9 minutes in 14 appearances with the Raptors. He quickly earned the trust of head coach Dwane Casey and, once he got comfortable in a role very different from his 905 role, fit in pretty quickly – he has the best net rating of anyone on the Raptors roster, sample sizes be damned.
The MVP award for Brown – voted on by the league’s coaches and general managers – adds to the 905’s quickly filling trophy case. In the team’s inaugural season, Axel Toupane was named Most Improved Player and Scott Suggs won the league’s Sportsmanship Award. Last year, Edy Tavares was named Defensive Player of the Year and Jerry Stackhouse was given Coach of the Year honors. Add Brown’s MVP, Siakam’s Finals MVP, a Dunk Contest win for John Jordan, All-G League nods for Tavares and Toupane (and more likely coming), a 2016-17 championship, and a run back to the finals, all in three seasons, and it would stand to reason that Dan Tolzman is in line for Executive of the Year at some point, too.
Our congratulations to Brown on one heck of a year with both clubs.
