If there’s a rim and a basketball, former University of Washington standout Terrell Brown Jr. is probably not far away, always trying to talk his way into the next game.
At Garfield High School, he hung in there even while playing in the shadow of Jaylen Nowell.
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The 6-foot-3 Brown ended up attending five different colleges, among them Western Oregon, Shoreline Community College, Seattle University, Arizona and Washington, always looking for a place in the limelight.
He was an all-conference player for SU and the UW, led the Pac-12 in scoring in 2022, but was relegated to a part-time starting role in Tucson.
While he hasn’t been able to crack the NBA, he’s made a living off four seasons played in the NBA G League in Memphis and Greensboro, North Carolina.
Lately, Brown, 28, has been part of something called The Basketball Tournament, a $2 million winner-take-all, single-elimination competition for ragtag teams assembled to make a run at a big payday.
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On Thursday night, he turned up in a rousing video clip circulated online after draining a 3-pointer at the buzzer in Las Vegas to beat the Mecca 71-69 and send his Davis Steel team into Sunday’s championship game against La Familia in Lexington, Kentucky.
The team names all sound like something out of a Marvel comic book.
In his big moment on this basketball stage at Vegas’ M Resort, Brown took a pass to the right of the basket, took a dribble, let a defender fly past him and then calmly drained the game-winner as the buzzer sounded.
His teammates all chased him to the other end of the floor in an uproarious celebration.
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The thing that made this all so satisfying for Brown is he’s struggled mightily to shoot the three-pointer throughout his well-traveled basketball career, which is probably the biggest reason he’s never made it onto an NBA roster.
Terrell Brown Jr. (23) dribbles the ball for Washington against Oregon State in 2022. | USA TODAY Sports
At the UW in 2022, he connected on just 20 percent of his shots behind the line, even while averaging 21.7 points per game to top the Pac-12, and he finished at 28.4 percent for his career at those four schools.
In 128 G League games, he’s shot just 28.4 percent from 3-point range, still not a real dependable outside shooter.
Yet on Sunday, Brown hit a big one and now he and his makeshift teammates, who include former Arizona teammate Gabe York, will gather in Kentucky to see if they can pull off the big payday.
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FOX Sports will broadcast the championship game on national TV at 10 a.m. PT.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/washington as Ex-Husky Terrell Brown Finds His 3-Point Stroke At Buzzer.
