"It was just a matter of coming up here and playing," he said. "They had a lot of injuries, and I just came in with the mindset to do whatever I could to help out. As the injuries continued, the role got bigger and bigger."

It got so big that Brown scored 19 points in a game multiple times this season, and he posted a season-high 24 against Philadelphia last Tuesday.

But perhaps nothing was better than Friday night in New Orleans, where he hit a critical 3-pointer with 11.3 seconds remaining to put the Hornets up by five in an 88-84 win over Sacramento.

"You see guys like (ex-Spurs teammate) Robert Horry ... hitting big shots, and you want to know how that feels," Brown said.

Or guys like then-Los Angeles Laker Fisher, whose improbable 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds left in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals was a dagger to Brown's Spurs?

"Yeah, Derek Fisher," Brown said. "I didn't want to say that, because that brought up a bad memory, but you see people like that hitting shots, and you just want to know what that feels like — to have the shot clock running down."

Now that he's experienced it, Brown — who never seemed to win coach Jerry Sloan's full favor in Utah — can return to doing for the Hornets what he feels like he never could with the Jazz.

"Here," he said, "it's more of an attitude to go out there and show what you can do.

"Everybody has that opportunity, and within our offense everybody has an opportunity to touch the ball — and play with the ball in their hands, and do things like that," Brown added before scoing 13 points on 5-of-11 shooting from the field in the Hornets' 94-83 win over the Jazz on Saturday. "It's not as structured, in the sense that you're a basketball player and you go out there and you make basketball plays, and that's it."

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com