As a 737 Captain it's completely normal to use speed brakes without flaps. Can't use flaps above FL200 (limitation) on the 737 but you can pop the boards from FL410 right down to 1000 AFL. In fact, if the flaps are 40 on the MAX, you can't use speed brakes at all. So not sure what the real issue with the flaps/speed brakes are. Is the 777 different? If so, is it a stretch to understand that the two planes may not have the same procedures and that it should not take that much brain power to understand this?