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After another disappointing loss early in the season, Jalen Brunson stood at his locker ready to talk to the media in Milwaukee.
As the point guard turned around after the Knicks’ fourth loss in six games, with a straight face as always, he was wearing a homemade T-shirt, all black with white letters on it, looking as if It came straight off the Vistaprint press. ,
A familiar phrase on Brunson’s chest read: The magic is at work.
“This is a Sandra Brunson production,” Brunson said, referring to her mother, who stamped the family’s longtime motto on the crewneck. Of course, “magic is at work” isn’t the Brunson family’s core.
Anyone who knows Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau has a Pavlovian relationship with that expression. Those 19 letters make up his favorite saying. Find someone who has been around the coach, mention that magic is working and prepare that person to make a quip about Thibodeau or go into the image of a man who dedicated his life to basketball. Is.
Several years ago, Brunson’s father, Rick, who played for Thibodeau when he was a player and when Thibodeau was an assistant coach with the Knicks in the 1990s, broke out the colloquialism for himself. He and Sandra have repeated this to Jalen for two and a half decades. Rick is somewhat loyal to Thibodeau. He played for him in New York, where the two became close. He was Thibodeau’s assistant in the head coach’s first stop in Chicago, his second stop in Minnesota and now his third stop in New York.
During those years Rick would take his son to the office. Thibodeau remembers the 1990s when Jalen was not only too young for stardom but also too young for grade school and attending Knicks practices with prepared impressions of the team’s top players. He hired Latrell Sprewell, Allan Houston, Patrick Ewing and Larry Johnson.
“He had it perfect,” Thibodeau said. “He was, like, 6 (years old) and he messed up all the moves.”
Thibodeau never knew then that he would eventually become the head coach of that franchise. Even less, he couldn’t have guessed that Rick’s son would be his team’s leader — and, as of Thursday, officially become an NBA All-Star for the first time in his career.
No one in the camp could have guessed that the team engineer who would break the never-ending stretch of Knicks-induced depression among its fan base would be Rick Brunson’s then-agent, Leon Rose, who would Will do. He would eventually work his way up to CAA, which also represents Thibodeau, to run the agency’s basketball division before the Knicks hired him to become their team president in 2020.
When Jalen signed with the Knicks two years ago, he responded with one word to explain the reason: “Family.” He was not expected to just work for his father; Rose was also there. He wanted to play for Thibodeau, an avid basketball player he had known since he was too young to remember. And it’s not like the Knicks snatched away someone who was just as coveted everywhere else.
Brunson’s former team, the Dallas Mavericks, decided not to offer him an extension that would have been roughly half of the $104 million he ultimately signed with the Knicks, a contract that was widely criticized as overpaid. . Today, it remains one of the NBA’s most team-friendly deals.
This hasn’t been the trajectory of a typical All-Star. Brunson was a three-year collegiate constant, a second-round pick, who did not play much as a rookie and who did not start regularly until his fourth professional season. He’s smaller than his teammates, can barely dunk and is more obsessed with pivots than crossovers.
Of all the parallel universes in existence, this is the only one where Brunson becomes an All-Star in this city with this team, playing for this team president and this coach, while also becoming the face of an organizational turnaround. goes. And yet, it is happening.
When the NBA announced All-Star reserves on Thursday, two Knicks stood out: Julius Randle, now an All-Star for the third time in four seasons, and Brunson, who made it for the first time.
Randall’s origins are also unconventional. The Los Angeles Lakers selected him in the 2014 lottery but he was allowed to leave in free agency after his first NBA contract expired. He signed a one-year contract with the New Orleans Pelicans, who also released him after that season. After the pursuit of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant ended with both stars headed to the Brooklyn Nets, the Knicks turned to Randle and handed him a short-term deal for less money.
No one could have predicted that four and a half years later, a New York basketball team would capture the heart of the city behind two of its All-Stars — and neither of them would be Durant or Irving.
“What’s special is that they’re self-made,” Thibodeau said. “It was not given to him, and he has earned it. We are proud of him.”
It should never have happened. And yet, we are seeing the same events happening night after night.
The Knicks are 32–17 on the season, winners of nine consecutive games. It seems like they have chosen to stop losing. Since Jan. 1, they are 15-2. Every night, someone new gets hurt, and it doesn’t matter. Mitchell Robinson had ankle surgery in December, but the team has since kept Isaiah Hartenstein from proving he’s a first-string prospect. And lately, the roster has been falling apart.
Less than a week earlier, Randle had dislocated his shoulder. He missed his first game on Monday. That same night, OG Anunoby had to sit out due to inflammation in his elbow. He has not played in three matches since then. A day later, Quentin Grimes suffered a knee injury, now sprained, sidelining him.
The Knicks were missing four rotation players Thursday night. Thibodeau is breaking timing rules, running his favorite 59 minutes in regulation games. And yet, they keep winning.
They destroyed the Charlotte Hornets on Monday, destroyed the respectable Utah Jazz the next evening and came out on top with a very thrilling Indiana Pacers 109-105 on Thursday after trailing by 15.
Somehow, the Knicks, a team that has been more associated with dirt than ballers for the past 23 years, are a half-game out of second place in the Eastern Conference. And it’s hard to look anywhere except Brunson.
Thursday’s performance was his masterpiece: a 40-point performance against a defense that threw anything at him. With the Knicks shorthanded, the Pacers double-teamed him from the beginning. They were getting physical with Brunson, as Brunson typically does with anyone he is competing against – so much so that near the end of the game, Brunson received a slap in the face and was on the floor. Fell down and whistles started blowing.
On the next play, Brunson scored an and-1, giving New York a one-point lead with less than two minutes to play.
“An A, 1B, it doesn’t matter. The guy is an all-star. “He’s having an MVP-caliber season right now,” Donte DiVincenzo said. “He should be Player of the Month. What else can I say? The guy is doing everything he can to win us games. It’s not easy right now with Julius going down, Ozzie going down, Mitch not being here. “We’ve had everything thrown against us and still got to win us games.”
Brunson is now averaging 27.1 points, a career high, and will go along with 6.4 assists on the season. On Thursday, the Knicks had their fifth 40-point game in their first 49 games. He has scored more than 30 19 times. Of the 534 players who have scored a point so far this season, only three, a trio of MVP candidates, have scored more points than Brunson: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic.
This story, this career was going to happen only in dreams.
If Rose had not come to the Knicks, if he had not hired Thibodeau immediately upon his arrival, if Thibodeau had not been close to Rick 25 years earlier, if Rick had not been a lifelong Rose loyalist, if Rick and Rose had children so long. By the time Rose’s son, Sam, had not grown up to be Jalen’s agent, a player with this background probably would not have become an All-Star for this team.
But, somehow, it happened. Brunson has become one of the NBA’s most unlikely All-Stars, becoming only the 21st second-rounder to make the All-Star Game since the league implemented a two-round draft in 1989. And somehow, the Knicks have followed suit in their place.
They’ve acquired his best friends from Villanova: DiVincenzo, Josh Hart and Ryan Arcidiacono. Somehow, all those players have joined the roster without even thinking. Somehow, they were able to add Anunoby, who embodies this group’s new identity: hard-nosed, defensive-minded and team-oriented.
It starts from the top.
The Knicks have gone out of their way to sign Thibodeau-minded players: ones who care about defense first, ones who will dive into the stands with three minutes to go in a 20-point game. But it helps when your best player plays like this too.
“When your All-Star and your leader does that, it sets the standard,” Hart said. “But it’s something each of us is proud of.”
In a league where some teams enact rules discouraging players from diving for balls in practice scrimmages, simply because they can’t risk injuring a leading performer, Brunson takes the charge in practice. He is one of two people on the team, along with Arcidiacono, who does so. He leads the NBA in offensive fouls. He is a star who presents himself as a role player, probably because he shouldn’t have been any higher than that.
He should not have gone for 40 so many times. He was not considered the guy Knicks fans would stay up late for so they could lose their voices.
After Thursday’s win over the Pacers, MSG’s Alan Hahn caught up with Brunson for an exclusive postgame, on-court interview, the audio of which is played throughout the arena as well as on television. Of course, this was not your ordinary game.
Brunson went for just 40 points against a defense that was overpowering him. He had officially made an All-Star just hours earlier. The attendance of 20,000 was the rowdiest of any group to fill Madison Square Garden so far this season. When the Knicks are on a roll, and the fanbase knows it, these games turn into another type of event.
Most of them did not come out after the game was over. Instead, he waited for Brunson to begin the interview. Hahn asked about the night Brunson finally made an All-Star team after earning the label of token snub a season ago. But even with the mic on, you could barely hear Hahn among the thousands of people in the arena shouting “MVP!” Could hear shouting. mantra.
Brunson, who is not known for public displays of emotion, choked up. He couldn’t bring himself to talk.
“This whole experience was cool, how we won, obviously what happened before the game,” Brunson said. “You always work for certain moments but you never know how to react after they happen. It was special.”
That moment wasn’t just about Thursday night — not just about a team that played like the best in the NBA for a month or a player who reinvigorated a formerly poor franchise and became unfairly elite. Entered the land. There’s no doubt about it: The Knicks’ continued search for an All-NBA performer, a theme since Rose took over the front office four years ago, needs to be reframed. It’s certainly not a search for a star; it’s a hunt one more star.
No one saw this happening, except maybe one or three people who knew Brunson since he was in pre-K.
“There have always been deniers,” Thibodeau said. “And he always proves them wrong.”
(Photo of Jalen Brunson: Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
