[Stove clicking.]
Check it out now. With 6:39 left in the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals, Victor Wembanyama asks for it. The omnipresent Frenchman calls for a switch after OG Anunoby set a ball screen for Knick Point Lord Jalen Brunson, and Brunson is happy to oblige. See the combo. Destinies warring. Sizes contradicting. It ain’t quite Manute and Muggsy, but there is … let’s call it a noticeable dissimilarity in body styles.
Something to keep in mind—at this point in the game, Brunson is working on an open flame. He has been at the grill for a while, cooking up anything San Antone throws at him, and the Defensive Player of the Year has seen enough. The Spurs are already down 3-1 in the series, and their once beefy lead in Game 5 has been hacked down to six. It’s put-up time, the moment L’extraterrestre takes control of the game and sends Brunson’s shit halfway to Hondo. Unfortunately for Wembanyama, he gets the switch he asked for.
Brunson walks the tower toward the middle of the floor, moves the ball briefly to his left hand, and then hits the jets. Left-to-right crossover, between the legs, and he’s got him on his hip. Two more bounces with the right, and Wembanyama is still at his side, hovering, looming. Understand, this man is basically a giant pterosaur. A quetzalcoatlus on wheels. Just before Brunson gets into the lane, he takes a dribble into the dino’s body and creates a hint of separation; then the creative buffering starts. It’s necessary to get a little sly when you’re dealing with anything from the Late Cretaceous period. Brunson flows into an artful hesitation, a woozy stutter step, and finishes a right-handed quick hitter off the glass. Wembanyama tries to swat it away but whiffs. Beware the buzz saw.
After an inefficient start to the series, Brunson reached heights heretofore unreached by a small guard on that stage. He got loose and went for 36 points, seven assists, and five rebounds in New York’s miracle Game 4 comeback, then turned in one of the greatest closeout games in Finals history: 45 points on 14-of-27 shooting, 4-of-7 from 3, and 13-of-15 from the line. He was nails. He was true.
There are a lot of reasons the New York Knicks won their first title in 53 years this season. Brunson is the biggest. The shotmaking, the resolve, the poise, the handle, the audacity, the wiggle, the drive, the angles, the buckets, the buckets, the buckets. Brunson hoops with the kind of self-belief and attention to detail that can come only via mountains of work. His game is part ballistics and part balletics. The footwork is buttery, pristine, instinctual. Brunson salts his attacks with various pauses, pivots, step-throughs, Euros, bumps, improvisations. The touch is puffy. He shoots a pretty ball. Something light about it, gets a lot of air. It’s a quiet ball, too. There are stretches of games when his jumper gets so hot, it seems allergic to the rim; every make is a swish. His floater reminds me: It rains diamonds on Saturn. Gather round as he makes the Great Sphinx of Giza disappear.
And that is all well and good, but it’s Brunson’s attitude that hits the hardest. The attitude is the reason he looked at the Knicks’ long history of futility and said, “Sign me up.” He has the demeanor of a man who has seen the future and likes it. On the court, he is equipped with state-of-the-art anti-rattling technology. He gets cinematic in the clutch, turns any arena he enters into a house of arcing daggers. He will jitterbug into a defense’s brain, send them into hallucinatory tantrums, and pull up with a left hand that specializes in slamming doors. He’s not scared to look, and he’s not shook. This is the Rock of Manhattan. The Poisemaster in Chief. He’s unflappable. I promise you can’t flap him.
“Follow through. Everything you do has to be legit. Habits.”
This is Rick Brunson.
“Not fast enough. No follow-through, not fast enough.”
It’s 2008, and he’s coaching, standing along the baseline of an outdoor basketball court in Chicago, giving orders. His 12-year-old son, Jalen, is his pupil, and Jalen is tired.
“Tired is for the weak,” says Rick. “Mentally strong. Go.”
His father knows his son’s size will make him an underdog. Rick was a journeyman backup guard who played for eight teams during his nine NBA seasons. He has Jalen dribbling from end to end, stopping only to take a pull-up jumper at each free throw line. Jalen does this over and over and over. His legs want rest. They slow down into a walk. Dad barks.
“Stop walking.”
This is the beginning. Well, not the very beginning. The very beginning was going to work with Dad. Little Brunson is running around MSG housing cupfuls of M&M’s, following Patrick Ewing around the facility, wearing Knicks sweatshirts and smiling for the camera. That’s how it started. But this time running drill after drill is foundational, the work that makes all the subsequent work possible. In the heat of these days, grinding away on the blacktop, Brunson makes himself a winner.
Skip ahead to March 21, 2015. Carver Arena, Peoria, Illinois. The 4A state championship game. Normal Community Ironmen vs. Adlai E. Stevenson Patriots. There’s 1:05 left in the game, and the Pats lead 52-37. Brunson has scored 30 of Stevenson’s 52 points, and the Comcast SportsNet broadcast has just named him the Country Financial Player of the Game. Now he’s on his way to the bench. From the Comcast announcer:
An outstanding career from one of the best point guards this state has ever seen. He’s gonna go to Villanova University next season … and Dave, we have been so fortunate to witness Jalen Brunson, Jabari Parker, Jahlil Okafor in consecutive years. I mean, you think about that. Jabari Parker, no. 2 pick in the 2014 NBA draft. Jahlil Okafor, who in my opinion should be the no. 1 pick in this year’s upcoming draft. Jalen Brunson, only time will tell what he will do, if he can make it to the NBA.
At the end of the game, Brunson mobs the court with the rest of his teammates. They do the we just won thing, jump in circles, reach delirium. After 10 seconds he bails, sprints away, and ducks under the rope that security is wrapping the court with. For a while, the camera loses him. It’s more Stevenson players bouncing around, some light moshing. Then the camera finds him again. He’s hugging his mom.
When you win a lot, people ask you to talk about it. Villanova Athletics’ YouTube operation is no exception. You bag two natties and National Player of the Year while hooping for the Cats, they’re going to be interested in everything you have to say. Brunson, on the moments after winning his second national championship:
When Josh [Hart] and Kris [Jenkins] came over to me, that was special because they saw the sacrifice that I did my freshman year. … I sacrificed a lot just to be able to make sure that team was the best that it could be. Being open-minded for those leaders to lead me every day, it made me realize what being a teammate really means, and it means giving up everything. For that moment to come full circle, where now I’m the leader and I’m leading guys to a national championship … it was an awesome moment.
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Inside Villanova’s Davis Center, there are pictures and paintings and jerseys of former Cats lining the walls, a living installation of Villanova basketball history. When Brunson’s jersey is added to the mix in 2019, there’s a small ceremony. Brunson’s parents are there. So is Leon Rose. Villanova head coach Jay Wright tries to speak, but can say only a few words before he gets choked up and asks a reverend to step in. Around seven years later, Brunson will win an NBA championship playing with two of his Cats teammates: Hart and Mikal Bridges.
Jump to April 18, 2022. It’s Game 2 of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs. Utah at Dallas. The Jazz won Game 1, and the Mavs look outhorsed with all-world point guard Luka Doncic sidelined with an injury. But sometimes saviors appear when something needs saving. It’s a rarity that the savior is a 6-foot-2 former second-round pick, but Brunson is special. How things usually go is unimportant to him. He’s involved? Things are about to get really unusual.
He’s got the Kobe Grinches on, and he’s ruining everybody’s night. He’s putting Royce O’Neale in the wash, banking teardrops off the glass. He’s hunting Donovan Mitchell for sport, going right at him in transition, becoming mighty. He’s dropping Bojan Bogdanovic into a messy hell. Quin Snyder has to buy himself seven new pairs of glasses just to get over it. Brunson drops 41 on 15-for-25 shooting, hits six of his 10 3s, and adds eight rebounds, five assists, and two steals. It’s the first big NBA stage moment where Brunson shines. We don’t know it at the time, but that night in Dallas, the league begins to change.
Spotted in the background of some of the Brunson highlights from that night is then–Mavericks assistant coach Sean Sweeney. He seems very pleased with Brunson’s many makes. I counted at least two fist pumps, one head nod, and one fairly enthusiastic clap. About four years and two months later, Sweeney would coach the San Antonio defense tasked with trying to keep Brunson from getting his first ring. Sweeney and his defense would fail.
Jalen Brunson during Game 2 against the Jazz on April 18, 2022
Rick Brunson plays a total of 9.8 seconds during the 1999 Spurs-Knicks Finals, all of which come in Game 3. Just before the halftime whistle, New York head honcho Jeff Van Gundy subs him in for Chris Dudley. JVG wants to get some more shooting on the floor, and Dudley isn’t really known for his jumper as much as he is known for getting disrespectfully yammed on by Shaq. The Knicks get Latrell Sprewell the ball at the top of the key. Spree drives down main and kicks to Allan Houston for a clanked corner 3. Brunson tries for the offensive rebound, but Malik Rose taps it out of reach. The halftime buzzer sounds and ends Brunson’s time on the court. The Spurs go on to beat the Knicks in five.
Thanks to Rick’s son, things went differently for New York this time around. By the time the confetti had settled on the 2026 Knicks’ Finals-clinching win, the King of New York was too emotional to speak. He tried to find words for the feeling, but he didn’t need to. His face told the story. Bing bong, the drought is dead. Until this past weekend, there were four players in the history of basketball who had won Naismith College Player of the Year, an NCAA championship, an NBA title, and Finals MVP: Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. On Saturday, Brunson joined their number.
Brunson’s 45 in the deciding Game 5 has been mentioned. What hasn’t been mentioned is that the Knicks scored only 94 points total. For you math nerds out there, that means Brunson damn near outscored the rest of his teammates by himself. We’re talking premium wizardry. When you do this for a franchise that has not won a title in 53 years, a franchise that’s located in the biggest city in the country, a city that worships basketball, you become a statue. You become a symbol. You become immortal.
There’s a video of Jalen and Rick celebrating on the night the Knicks won the title. They’re somewhere in the bowels of the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio. Jalen’s Mick Ultra goggles glow metallic blue, and there’s a bottle of Champagne in his hands. He starts to shake it. Rick, who doesn’t want to get wet, tries to run off. Jalen chases him down. The work is over. Now they can play.
