It's not often a player who starts on the bench can vie for a league MVP title.

Granted, it's early in the Australian NBL season but Breakers import Barry Brown Jr is putting his name up this season at both ends of the court.

Brown Jr is second in points scored, strong defensively and, remarkably, doing it all off the bench – a role he’s perfectly fine with.

“I told coach and I told my teammates that I just want to win a championship.”

Coach Mody Maor said Brown Jr is setting the tone for the squad.

“He's been one of our better defenders, he accepts the role that he's been given, he cares about winning more than he cares about himself.”

Brown Jr’s performances, along with the rest of the team for that matter, have them flying high at second in the standings after nine games with a 6-3 record although Maor isn’t getting ahead of himself.

“We're second on the ladder, but we're two losses away from not being in the plan,” Maor said.

“It's good to put these things into perspective, to feel good about what we've done but it's very early days within the season.”

The recent league strugglers are anything but this year with a strong wall seeing them concede under 76 points a game so far, putting them on pace to be one of the most impressive defensive teams in some time.

Try telling that to their coach.

“The main gains for us are still on the defensive side, we feel we're good nut there's areas we can be great.”