To fully appreciate how Jalen Brunson redeemed the New York Knicks, who on Thursday night defeated the Philadelphia 76ers To reach the round of 16 of the NBA playoffs, you must understand the context and history of the team’s point guard. After team owner James Dolan was handed the Knicks on a silver platter by his Cablevision founding father in the late 1990s, the Knicks descended into chaos and degradation. The obvious void at the point guard position reflected a lack of leadership on and off the court. This exacerbated the team’s dysfunction, as it lacked a true leader to galvanize the incompatible pieces.
Related: How the Knicks went from laughing stock to NBA Finals contenders (yes, really)
Until Brunson arrived, of course. The 27-year-old isn’t just turning the Knicks into a contender. He is fulfilling the dreams of generations of Knicks fans who have only known defeat or forgotten what it’s like to win. The son of Rick Brunson, former Knicks third-string guard and protégé of John Chaney, known for a journeyman career full of hustle, defense and energy, Jalen shares his father’s role-playing heart while being imbued with the championship desire and of Rick’s damned failure. 1999 Finals Team. Little Jalen was bouncing around on the last great Knicks team, strapped to his father’s hip at team practice, where Tom Thibodeau was an assistant coach to Jeff Van Gundy, and Leon Rose, Rick’s agent, were the pillars.
Rose is now president of the Knicks, Thibodeau is the team’s coach and Jalen Brunson is its star player. The trio is in a unique position to continue the mission of that 1999 team, a group of lovable guys who played for each other and a relentless coach.
Brunson has three men at his side — his father, Rose and Thibodeau — who can provide unique insights into the Knicks’ recent failures and, further back, their glory days. No Knicks player since 1999 has had this luxury of history and context. Thibodeau is a taskmaster, but he has also instilled discipline in a franchise that has often fallen into disarray. As for Rose, where previous Dolan executives targeted failed former stars and mediocre replacements to solve the problem, Rose chose Brunson based on fit. Rick was Rose’s first client. The two know each other with an incomparable familiarity. Rose knew Jalen possessed the potential to fill the team’s most glaring void because Rick had trained him since birth.
Even the unpopular Dolan deserves some credit for not butting in and ruining everything. And who could forget Mark Cuban and Nico Harrison of Brunson’s former team, Dallas, who repeated Steve Nash’s sin yet again by letting their point guard and second-best player walk for nothing in free agency? It took a seismic stroke of luck for the Knicks and poor decision-making by the Mavericks to find Brunson with the Knicks.
Brunson is what Knicks fans wanted from Stephon Marbury, who was run out of town in 2009: a kid from the tri-state area who grew up a Knicks fan and returned home to take the team to the next level. Fortunately for New Yorkers, Brunson has been much better than the kid from Coney Island. This makes Marbury’s recent return to the Garden, completing his circle with the Knicks as Brunson’s biggest supportereven more satisfying.
Brunson took on the role of hometown hero with a game antithetical to the modern guard. He relies on footwork, IQ and counters to shoot the rock at a level good enough for the best guard in the NBA. After losing teammate and fellow All-Star Julius Randle for the season, Brunson took on an even larger role on offense while also increasing his assists to improve his teammates.
He already set the franchise playoff scoring record with 47 points in a Game 4 victory over the 76ers that gave New York a 3-1 series lead. After taking his team to the second round of the playoffs in his first year with the Knicks, he has his sights set on a Finals run in year two. He did all of this with Randle out for most of the regular season and all of the postseason. Brunson and the Knicks’ nine-player rotation don’t have a single lottery pick. It’s just a bunch of first-rounders and former second-round picks playing the best basketball of their careers, all thanks to the majesty of Brunson’s rise to stardom.
Even though it’s only his second season in New York, it feels like Brunson has been throwing himself into the blue and orange challenge for a decade. Playing your entire career at Madison Square Garden already seems like a certainty. Watching Brunson play basketball in a Knicks jersey feels like the four-point game of Larry Johnson and Allan Houston game winning float. Looks like Kristaps Porzingus before leaving for his final dunk with the Knicks. And it seems like it was the second before Tweet by Adrian Wojnarowski announcing the signing of Kevin Durant with the Brooklyn Nets. In short, it looks like hope.
While it’s easy to get lost in the Knicks mythology, every epic has an origin story. Thanks to the internet, Brunson’s is forever honored. It is found in a grainy video taken in the early 2000s when Rick’s playing career had ended and his coaching career with his son was just beginning. Rick and his wife, Sandra, are driving Jalen around an empty basketball court. Skinny pre-teen Jalen looks exhausted but perseveres, dribbling up and down the court before releasing a pull-up jumper. Rick warns him to go ahead with his shot. But it’s more than follow-up. It is a lesson in consistency, in legitimacy. Rick can be heard repeatedly telling his son that everything he does “has to be legit.”
Before the video fades to black, Jalen digs deep, tightening his dribble, driving to the basket and following through with his shot. Still, you can see the man he will become. In this simple one-minute video, Knicks fans can see the future. And after holding their breath for 20 years, they can finally exhale.
