His body is thick and his will is unbending, and his braids flap as he goes, which is almost 100 percent of the time to his left. Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks isn’t all that fast, or tall. He doesn’t specialize in dunking from the free-throw line, or bury you with world-class shooting behind the arc. He is, in truth, not a player who overwhelms you with his physical gifts, in the manner of Michael Jordan or LeBron James or, back in the day, Julius Erving or Elgin Baylor.
But you know what the 27-year-old Brunson does do? He dominates. He puts his foot on your competitive throat. He dares you to stop him. He is a quirky composite of slick playmaking and herky-jerky drive when he often doesn’t just draw contact, but initiates it. Opponents know what’s coming, and it rarely matters. Jusk ask the Philadelphia 76ers, who showed deep heart and skill and resilience in an epic, six-game first-round series against the Knicks, only to be done in, mostly, by Brunson.
After subpar performances in the first two games – both Knicks victories – Brunson went for 39. 47. 40 and 41 in the next four games. The last player to put up such playoff numbers was Jordan, 31 years ago. So the Knicks, who haven’t won an NBA title in more than a half-century, move on to the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers, powered not just by Brunson, but by his former college running mates and fellow national champions, Donte DiVincenzo and Josh Hart, who opened the Madison Square Garden branch of Villanova last fall and we can only imagine how much their former coach, Jay Wright, is enjoying it. Hart’s three-pointer from the top of the key in Game 6 – on Brunson’s 12th assist of the night – was the biggest basket of the game. Brunson finished with 41 points and the dozen assists. Hart had 16 points, 14 rebounds (more than Joel Embiid) and 7 assists. DiVincenzo had 18 points and 7 assists and shot 5-for-9 from three-point range. The guys from Philadelphia’s Main Line put up 75 points and 26 assists and played 138 out of a possible 144 minutes. Knicks fans, who made a road trip to the Wells Fargo Center by the carload and trainload, didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory when they celebrated their team’s triumph with a clever F*** Embiid chant when it was all over, but let’s not let that classlessness taint the larger achievement by the Knicks, who scored 650 points in the series. The Sixers? They scored 649 points. It may have been even in closer than that.
“We got a long way to go,” Brunson said after the game. “We’re going to keep fighting. That’s been our thing all year. No matter what happens, you want to come out the next day and we’re going to keep fighting.”
It seems almost unfathomable now, but Brunson wasn’t even drafted in the first round coming out of Villanova in 2018. The Mavericks took him 33rd overall, and it didn’t take long for the Mavs’ lottery pick in that draft, Luka Doncic, to appreciate what a find Brunson was, a player who was a consummate pro from Day 1, befitting the son of an NBA journeyman, who played nine years for nine teams. Rick Brunson, now a Knicks’ assistant, had a total of 9 points in his playoff career, which is a couple of trips down the floor for his kid. But he modeled the commitment to work hard and get better, and now look. In an interview with J.J. Redick on his podcast “The Old Man and The Three, ” Doncic talked about his vivid recollection of Jalen Brunson in a 2022 first-round series against the Jazz. The Mavericks, without the injured Doncic, had lost the first game at home, and with Doncic sidelined again in Game 2, all Brunson did was score a career-high 41 points on 15-of-25 shooting, without committing a turnover.
“I was just on the bench, watching, (thinking), ‘Wow, this guy is amazing,’” Doncic said.
Brunson was close to re-signing with the Mavs for four years and $55 million earlier that season, but when the deal wasn’t finalized, he played it out. It would turn out to be a colossal front-office blunder for the Mavs and a masterstroke for the Knicks, who landed an emergent star while the Mavs got nothing in return.
For reasons well beyond the $104 million contract Brunson signed, it all made sense. Brunson was a toddler in 1999, hanging around the Knicks when Rick was on Jeff Van Gundy’s bench, and Tom Thibodeau was his assistant. Leon Rose was Rick’s agent then, and Knicks’ president now. Brunson averaged 24 points per game in his first year with the Knicks, then bumped it up to 28.7 this year, when he made his first all-star team. He has reinvigorated a franchise that had missed the playoffs in eight of the nine previous seasons before he arrived. He made a critical last-minute turnover that opened the door for the Sixers to come back from six down in the final 30 seconds of Game 5, and for Tyrese Maxey to tie it up with a shot from the Lincoln Tunnel. Brunson owned it, and changed the narrative two days later.
“We all know we missed an opportunity,” he said.
The conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers begin Monday at the Garden. You can count on Jalen Brunson and his bouncing braids to go left, shooting pullups, muscling into the paint, scoring few style points but quite a few of the other kind. He had three games against the Sixers with at least 35 points and 10 assists. The only other player to do that in a playoff series was Oscar Robertson.
“That’s a real cool name to be a part of,” Brunson said. “But I’m focused on the next round already.”
https://www.nba.com/knicks/videos/highlights-jalen-brunson-41-pts-12-ast-knicks-at-76ers
You made me want to watch the Knicks again. It’s been a long time.