‘Never thought he’d grow up to be the player he is…
Ramona ShelburneJun 8, 2026, 07:00 AM ETCloseSenior writer for ESPN.comSpent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily NewsMultiple AuthorsTHERE WAS A time not long ago, when Jalen Brunson questioned all the same things about himself that his critics did. His size, his athleticism, his talent. Becky Hammon hadn’t even been asked about whether a stocky, 6-foot-2 point guard could really be the best player on a New York Knicks team with championship aspirations, let alone one that’s two wins away from the franchise’s first title since 1973 as the NBA Finals continue tonight from Madison Square Garden at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC.This was back when talent evaluators and general managers across the league had already rendered their own verdict on whether two national titles at Villanova and a national player of the year award could translate to the NBA.It was a flat no.The verdict was fairly conclusive, as Brunson fell into the second round of the 2018 draft, while three of his Villanova teammates were drafted in the first round.Then-Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson couldn’t believe his good fortune.Earlier in the draft he’d snared a player he hoped would develop into a generational talent in Slovenian point guard Luka Doncic. Now a player he thought compared to other unconventional all-time greats he’d drafted — Steve Nash and Tim Hardaway — had somehow fallen to his team at No. 33.”All I know is he had the same things that Hardaway and Nash had — heart, brains and balls,” Nelson told ESPN. “Those are things that generally don’t fit into an analytics model.”But Brunson’s initial bout of imposter syndrome didn’t start until the rookie stepped foot into the Mavericks’ practice facility and witnessed his fellow 2018 draftee.Brunson would get to the gym and do the same shooting and footwork drills he’d done his whole life. The jump-stops and spins and jab steps — always off two feet — that allow him to make micro adjustments and make impossibly difficult shots over and around much taller players.”He was murdering people whenever we’d go one-on-one,” one former Mavericks assistant coach told ESPN. “We had some great defenders on that team. And he’s not exactly deceptive in what he’s trying to do. You know what he’s going to do. But no one could stop him.”Editor’s Picks2 RelatedThen he’d play with Doncic and everything would change.”Just seeing how effortlessly he did everything, it really made me question myself,” Brunson said. “I had to do all this work just to be in this position.”He had a choice: keep thinking about it or keep working.He chose the latter.”The biggest experience you get,” Brunson said, “is actually going through things.”His college roommate and longtime teammate Josh Hart has a theory as to why after so many have tried and failed to be the savior of the Knicks — and de facto king of New York — it just might end up being Brunson.”Because I don’t think he came in that way. He doesn’t care about it,” Hart said. “He just wants to win. When you have that humility, all the other stuff takes care of itself.”That’s part of Brunson’s appeal in New York: People might appreciate the glitz and glamour, but, ultimately, they respect guts and guile even more.THERE IS NOTHING inherently inferior about the version of “New York, New York” sung by Liza Minnelli in Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film of the same name.The lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb are spot on for the main character of the movie, Francine Evans, a singer fighting for her big break.It’s just that when Frank Sinatra remade the song a few years later, with a brassy new arrangement from legendary composer Don Costa, the song transformed from a song about the vulnerable struggle to make it, into a confident, swaggering civic anthem from a guy who already owned the town. It’s the same song, with mostly the same lyrics but a completely different interpretation because of who was singing.Brunson in Dallas was Minnelli. Brunson in New York has become Sinatra.A number one, top of the list, king of the hill.And just like the lyrics in the song, it’s the journey there, the fight for every shot and inch of space and respect on the court, that makes the brassy horns and lush strings of the chorus feel earned.”New York City is a place that historically loves a point guard, and Jalen Brunson represents a true point guard ethos,” said A Tribe Called Quest front man Q-Tip. “His leadership and his ability to take over the game with a gritty, New York City guile, is quintessential New York City point guard play.”Q-Tip was born as Jonathan William Davis in Harlem and raised in the St. Albans section of Queens. He made a name for himself as a battle rapper in high school and climbed up through the New York music scene in the late 1980s, before becoming a music icon and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.Like many of the longtime celebrity supporters of the Knicks, he has a special affinity for Brunson.NBA Finals on ABCThe Knicks are back in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999, and they’ll face the same opponent they did then, the Spurs. Watch the NBA Finals on ABC and the ESPN app.Game 1: Knicks 105, Spurs 95Game 2: Knicks 105, Spurs 104Game 3: June 8 at KnicksGame 4: June 10 at KnicksGame 5*: June 13 at SpursGame 6*: June 16 at KnicksGame 7*: June 19 at Spurs* if necessaryAll games tip off at 8:30 p.m. ET.
“New York is a hard place to live in,” said New York writer and orator Fran Lebowitz. “Just getting to the dry cleaners — if you can find one — is a triumph. Jalen Brunson is the personification of New York — he’s smart, he’s talented, and he won’t take no for an answer. He’s us — except he’s very good at basketball.”Lebowitz grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, looking across the Hudson River at the skyscrapers of Manhattan, dreaming of becoming a great New York City writer one day.Jalen Brunson was born 35 minutes south in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and spent his early childhood years going to games up and down the East Coast whenever his father Rick Brunson’s team would pass through.In 1999, the last year the Knicks made the NBA Finals before 2026, Rick played for the Knicks. He made fast friends with many of the team’s best players. Latrell Sprewell remembers spending a day with him in Philadelphia and becoming close friends for the next two decades.”They used to let the kids run around on the court and just take over after the game,” Sprewell said. “So I remember Jalen running around with my son and Little Pat (Patrick Ewing Jr).”I never thought he’d grow up to be the player he is today.”But he’s not surprised he’s so comfortable in this role.”Jalen’s made for these moments,” Sprewell said. “None of these moments are too big for him.”Two of those moments have come in the past five days. Brunson and the Knicks are the talk of the basketball world as they’ve taken a 2-0 series lead on the San Antonio Spurs in these NBA Finals, with two wins in San Antonio behind two impossibly clutch shots from Brunson.Both games were microcosms of how he has done all this.In Game 1 Brunson had to leave the game with a knee and ankle injury. He hadn’t shot well at all, but he kept at it.By the fourth quarter the shots started going in — including an impossible shift-to-the-side floater over 6-9 Devin Vassell that sealed the Knicks’ 105-95 win.In Game 2, after another poor shooting performance, he crossed over 6-7 Spurs forward Julian Champagnie and drove to his right. As he reached the paint, four Spurs converged. As they did, he stopped, leaned back on his right foot and launched another floater over the outstretched fingers of Vassell. The ball barely touched the net as it slipped through to tie the score at 104 with 39 seconds left.Then, of course, he hit the go-ahead free throw with 9.5 seconds remaining after he snagged an errant pass from Spurs superstar Victor Wembanyama, sealing New York’s 105-104 win.”Every single day, we chip away and try to be the best that we can be,” Brunson said after Friday’s win. “Even with the series now, next game, mindset has to be 0-0 again. It’s just how it has to be. You can’t be comfortable.”You can’t be satisfied with anything.”play0:22Jalen Brunson answers with a nasty fadeaway bucketTO UNDERSTAND HOW Brunson rearranged his song from Dallas to New York, you have to understand how he was built in the first place. His father Rick is now a Knicks assistant coach and before each game he puts on a white Brunson brand sweatshirt with the phrase, “The Magic is in the Work” in orange script letters and puts his son through his pregame warmups.Brunson family lore holds that Rick built him for this stage and this role using the lessons of his own life and NBA career, which took him to eight different teams in nine seasons, never on more than a one-year contract, in addition to stops in Australia, the Philippines and the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association.”Rick had high expectations,” said Baker Dunleavy, the general manager of Villanova, where Brunson won two national titles in three years. “He would never shy away from saying, ‘I have a different plan for Jalen than for me. I don’t want him to be me as a player. I’m training him to be different. I don’t want him to be a guy that is just a role player.'”2026 NBA postseasonESPN has you covered through the NBA Finals.• Bracket, schedule, news and highlights• Staff: Game 1 takeaways, Game 2 preview• Kram: Top plays, lessons from Game 1• Bontemps: Execs debate Knicks vs. Spurs• Golliver: Ranking all 30 players• ‘Hoop Collective’: Windhorst & Co. talk playoffs
About the only way Rick taught Jalen to be the same as him was shooting left-handed. Jalen eats and writes right-handed but shoots left-handed because growing up, his dad would tape his right thumb to his hand. Rick explains now that it was more about the practicality of teaching his son a form he already knew.Every so often old home videos of Rick putting young Jalen through an arduous workout on an outdoor court, forcing him to run up and down a blacktop in the summer heat, goes viral. That court was in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Rick had landed an assistant coaching job at Virginia after his career ended, and right next door to a newly refurbished, air-conditioned facility the elder Brunson absolutely had access to.Those videos were shot by his mother Sandra, who was always looking for signs that her son might not want to be pushed as hard as his father was pushing him. Sometimes Jalen would complain. But he would never ask to stop”I think at any moment, if Jalen would’ve just backed out and said, ‘Listen, I don’t love this. I don’t want to do this,’ I think Rick would’ve relented,” Dunleavy said. “Even in that video that’s become so popular of Rick throwing the ball to the other end of the court and Jalen going to get it. He shrugged a little bit or whatever, but he just kept going.”He’s just like, ‘I want to be a great basketball player. This is what I want to do with my life.’ He had great clarity on that from a young age.”Dunleavy noticed how Rick would sometimes pull his son aside after games in which he had played poorly and take him to a nearby court.”I don’t think it was meant as a punishment,” Dunleavy said. “I think that’s just what they do.”Sean Ford has known Brunson since he was a teenager. As the men’s national team director of USA Basketball since 2001, Ford selected Brunson to the Under-19 USA team, a roster that included future rival Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum and won a gold medal in the 2015 FIBA U-19 World Championship. Brunson was named MVP of the event.”There’s always been this thing with Jalen,” Ford said. “From high school to USA basketball to Villanova to the Knicks, everyone’s like, ‘He’s really good, but I don’t know if it’ll translate to the next level.’ But then it always translates.”‘The Hoop Collective'”The Hoop Collective” podcast, hosted by Brian Windhorst, releases new shows every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the NBA season.• Listen to the latest episodes
But Ford truly began to understand Brunson when he asked him back to play for Team USA at the FIBA World Cup in 2023.Brunson wanted to play for the national team again, but he had scheduled his wedding on a date that conflicted with the tournament. Ford and executive director Grant Hill prepared to move on.A few days later though, Ford got a call. Brunson confirmed that he would play.”(Villanova coach) Jay Wright called and was like, ‘I can’t f—ing believe he’s changing his wedding to play for you.'”Ford could.”It’s like his dad made him mentally tough, Jay gave him the approach to life that made him selfless, then Jalen has just taken care of the basketball part and everything else,” he said. “That’s what you’re up against when you play him.”DONNIE NELSON STARTED scouting Brunson in high school, but his connection to the family went back even further.Nelson had been an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors and Mavericks under his father, Don Nelson, in the late 1990s. As a son trying to learn from his father and make his own way, he admired the way Rick’s agent, Leon Rose, was hustling to get him a shot in the league.”Leon couldn’t get Rick a job in the NBA to save his life,” Nelson said. “He was working so hard to get him into the league. But (Leon) didn’t have any money back then, so I’d always let him sleep on my couch.”Nelson never ended up signing Rick to one of his teams, but he thought back on those days years later when he started evaluating Jalen.”It was clear dating back to high school he had the right stuff in the DNA,” Nelson said. “It’s not just decision-making on the court, it’s the way you could tell his teammates would take a bullet for him.”Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle quickly took a liking to him and inserted him into the rotation.As a rookie he averaged 9.3 points, starting 38 of the 73 games he played. In his second year his scoring dipped to 8.2 points per game, playing mostly off the ball as Doncic carried the load.The main issue the Mavericks encountered was when Doncic and Brunson played together. Neither Doncic nor Brunson were strong defenders, so teams knew to target both to try to play them off the court. Which is exactly what happened in the Mavericks’ first-round playoff series loss to the LA Clippers in 2020.And if someone had to sit because of defensive limitations, it was always going to be Brunson. Questions about his long-term fit with Doncic, who still considers Brunson a close friend, began to emerge.After that, teams began regularly calling Dallas to inquire about Brunson’s availability, according to league and Mavericks sources.When it came time to offer him an extension in summer 2021, the Mavericks told Brunson they preferred to wait to see how the team performed so they could determine if the group was capable of contending for a championship.They also wanted time to evaluate whether it was feasible to re-sign both Brunson and wing Dorian Finney-Smith, Mavericks team sources said.According to ESPN’s reporting at the time, Brunson had informed the Mavericks in January that he was willing to sign the extension if it was offered then. But Dallas made the decision to hold off until after the trade deadline, in case the Mavericks had the opportunity to trade for a star, as an extension would have prevented Brunson from being eligible to be traded before the deadline.Dallas finally did offer him the extension after the trade deadline, at the same time they offered Finney-Smith an identical contract. Brunson declined it.He had become a starter alongside Doncic in December and was having the best season of his young career as the Mavericks went on a surprising run to the Western Conference finals.He even had a starring turn in their first-round series win over the Utah Jazz, scoring a career-high 41 points in Game 2 and averaging 27.8 points in the six-game series while Doncic missed time with a left calf injury.After the season, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said that re-signing Brunson was a top priority.League rules at the time stipulated that teams could not contact free agents until the evening before free agency began on July 1.Still, it had been clear for weeks the Knicks were targeting Brunson as an unrestricted free agent.On June 23, 2022, draft day, New York cleared roughly $30 million in salary cap space to sign Brunson in a complicated series of transactions that ultimately sent Kemba Walker and the draft rights to Jalen Duren to the Detroit Pistons.The Mavericks still believed they had a chance to retain Brunson because of what he had expressed back in January.What they didn’t realize was that it wasn’t just more money the Knicks were offering. It was about family.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesLEON ROSE, THE man who once slept on an executive’s couch trying to get Rick Brunson a job in the NBA, went on to become one of the most powerful agents in the business before becoming the Knicks’ president in March 2020.By that point, Rose had represented both Brunsons as an agent. When he left for the Knicks, his son Sam Rose joined Jalen Brunson’s representation team.In 2022, less than a month before Jalen Brunson was set to hit free agency, Leon Rose hired Rick Brunson as an assistant coach on Tom Thibodeau’s staff.”I think Jalen had a loyalty to the Mavs because they’d drafted him, but the Knicks were his actual family,” said a Mavericks source. “I don’t think we fully grasped that.”Still, when Brunson signed a four-year, $105 million free agent contract with the Knicks, it was widely panned as an overpay from an inexperienced front office executive who was being influenced by previous familial and professional bonds.Brunson had delivered a good season for the Mavericks but was unproven as a lead option — let alone as the lead option for the New York Knicks. He was, to many, still a stocky, undersized guard with limitations.It’s not hard to find compilations of commentators panning the deal and questioning whether Brunson would, as so many had done before, melt under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden. Those videos circulate widely whenever Brunson leads the Knicks to some new height.Former Knick Jamal Crawford also has a theory as to why Brunson has worn the crown in New York so well while others have been burdened by it.”He’s comfortable there,” Crawford said. “They empowered him. They believed in him. He’s got guys on the team from Villanova that he knows and who fit his play style. He’s got his dad on the bench who knows exactly what buttons to push to get him going. He knows Leon. So with that comfortability, I think you’re going to get the best of him.”Comfort. Top of the Knicks’ list. King of their hill.The Sinatra version.
A FEW WEEKS ago, after Brunson scored 30 points in a 121-108 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers that gave the Knicks a 3-0 hold on the Eastern Conference finals, he sat at his locker, headphones in, listening to something on his phone.”Probably Justin Bieber,” teammate Mikal Bridges said.In 2024, Brunson went on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and revealed that he had started listening to songs from Bieber’s “Purpose” album before a game at Villanova because of a recommendation from his sister, Erica, and has kept it as part of his game-day routine since.It has become one of those delightful facts that everyone who follows the Knicks knows about Brunson. He also loves “Law and Order” star Mariska Hargitay and gives her a hug whenever she’s courtside at a Knicks game. He says his New York bodega order is a peach Snapple, spicy sweet chili Doritos and a toasted everything bagel with egg, cheese, hash browns and spicy mayo.As his fame has grown, he has become adept at revealing endearing personal details about himself but risking very little of his privacy.He has studied “The Captain,” the documentary on New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter, like it was game tape. The way Jeter deflected or refocused questions meant to stir up controversy. The way he stayed poised under pressure, rarely showing frustration or elation.Breaking News from Shams CharaniaDownload the ESPN app and enable Shams Charania’s news alerts to receive push notifications for the latest updates first. Opt in by tapping the alerts bell in the top right corner. For more information, click here.
The way he never gave up more information than necessary. If Bridges and other onlookers in the locker room want to assume he’s listening to a Bieber song after the game, let them.”It was actually a Bible verse,” Brunson said quietly, without revealing which one.Even Fallon doesn’t pretend to know more about Brunson than what he has made publicly available.”Off the court, Jalen’s the nicest guy in the world,” Fallon said. “He’s been on the show, brought his wife, his mom and dad. I’ve met his sister. Then I see him at the Garden, and he won’t even look at me. He’s FOCUSED. Like, focused, focused.”When the Knicks elevated Brunson to team captain in August 2024, the team got Jeter and other captains from New York professional sports teams, such as Giants Super Bowl-winning quarterback Eli Manning and New York Rangers legend Mark Messier, to make a video for him.They shared their stories, their memories, what it was like to succeed and fail in front of fans who rise and fall with every result.The best advice came from Knicks Hall of Fame center Patrick Ewing, who voiced over a two-minute long piece titled, “Just Be Jalen.””The thing about this city, Jalen,” Ewing said. “It’s not just about what you accomplish here. But how you accomplish it.”Like a true New Yorker, you dare people to doubt you — and go about your business.”
Diterbitkan : 2026-06-08 13:41:00
sumber : www.espn.com
