Steve Popper: Knicks have a great leader in Jalen Brunson
Knicks' Jalen Brunson controls the ball during the second quarter against the Toronto Raptors at Madison Square Garden on Thursday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Back when reaching the NBA Finals was an expectation for the Knicks, Jeff Van Gundy would dismiss most talk about his own coaching acumen. Asked about anything he was accomplishing, he would point to Patrick Ewing and say, “When your best player is your hardest worker, no one else has an excuse.”
Maybe that is the common denominator with the Knicks team that regularly knocked on the door of the deep reaches of the postseason and finally crashed through to capture the first NBA title for the franchise in 53 years last June.
Whether it was Tom Thibodeau — a throwback to those days when the Knicks were battling the likes of Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller every year — guiding them from the bench or Mike Brown taking over last season, the job has been made easier because Jalen Brunson was not only the best player and the captain but the leader every time the team took the court.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed. That was particularly obvious if you paid attention to anywhere that Brunson ventured this summer, appearing on podcasts and late-night television, hosting Saturday Night Live and leading the parade through the Canyon of Heroes.
The Knicks took the floor for their final preseason test on Thursday night against the Raptors hours after the NBA’s annual general managers survey was released, and Brunson got all kinds of attention.
He was named the second-best point guard behind Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. He overwhelmingly was named the best leader. He even was placed third in an unusual category: Which current player would make the best head coach?
“I think Jalen has that thick skin and toughness about him to be in a seat like this,” Brown said before adding, looking into the cameras for Brunson to watch, “You won't need to, though. My view? If you don't want to. It's up to you, Jalen.”
Brunson has joked in the past that someday he’ll be the assistant coach to former Villanova and Knicks teammate Ryan Arcidiacono. And while his father, Rick Brunson, has become a valuable assistant coach on the Knicks' bench after nine years of fighting for his place as a player, Jalen Brunson likely won’t need the paycheck if he is content to walk away from the game when his playing days are done.
But for now, that leadership, whether it is being a coach on the floor or simply the team captain, is invaluable as the Knicks try to become the first team to repeat as champions since Golden State did it in 2018.
“First one is he studies the game, and that helps a lot,” Brown said. “Because you can always grow in any field you do. He walks the talk. He works extremely hard and he strives for perfection from himself. And when you do that — and when your peers see you do that and you’re looked upon as the best player on the team — it gives credibility to tell somebody else when they’re not giving their all, when they need to do this a little better or that a little bit better.
“But just as importantly, he’s not afraid. Because as a leader, sometimes you have to be on an island, because you always have to be conscious of ‘I got to do more, I got to do more’ in terms of working harder. Focus. Everybody is going to make mistakes, but those little things. So when you tell your teammates . . . they can get [ticked] at you. Or they can be, 'Who is he to tell me what to do?’ So you have to have a thick skin because it’s not always going to be you telling somebody to do something and they embrace it.”
It’s what Brunson — who had 20 points and seven assists as the Knicks beat the Raptors, 122-120, on Thursday night at the Garden to conclude preseason play at 1-4 —has done since his days at Villanova and now in New York. He even did it in Dallas when Luka Doncic was the biggest name in the room.
While the Knicks have returned nearly the entire squad from last season's championship run, there still are plenty of obstacles in their way. It will come from a much-improved Eastern Conference as well as the NBA’s more stringent anti-tanking rules. It will come from their own distractions, the contract extensions that remain a cloud over the team.
“I think what's most important is that last year we took everything one day at a time,” Brunson said at the start of training camp. “We were talking about — obviously, the topic was getting back to the conference finals and trying to advance. And I think for us now, the way we approached it last year was to take it one day at a time, every single day. So not talking about certain things.
"Obviously, we know what it takes, but just going into this with the same mindset for this journey. Even though it's a new journey, it's a different journey; the approach has to be the same, if not better.
“The first couple of weeks of the season is going to show us who we are and where we are. No matter what we're doing, whether we're playing great, playing bad, how are you going to be able to learn? And so, I mean, we'll find a way. We'll hold each other accountable, just like we did last year, and then we'll be better.”
If that sounds like coach-speak, well, the NBA’s general managers would agree. But as Brown said, he walks the talk, and that might be the most important thing for the Knicks as they try to find their way back.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
