Jalen Brunson 2024: The makings of a 1A
In a season where so many sought to put a ceiling over Jalen Brunson, the Knicks leader shattered each & every one, revealing new horizons for player & team
“This a game that — the big and bold, it favors that God-given thing. And I love Jalen Brunson, but you’re gonna put him on the level of a 1A? You’re putting him with Giannis? KD? Steph?” - Becky Hammon, 12/22/23
Translation: Jalen Brunson’s good, but from New York to Tokyo and everywhere in between, the universal truth of basketball is that height matters. A lot. If you don’t clear a certain threshold, you just can’t get in to “Club 1A,” barring infrequent historic exceptions to the rule.
At the time Hammon put her thoughts out into the ether, the Knicks were 16-11. They would go on to lose four of their next five games, to Milwaukee, Oklahoma City, Indiana, and Orlando — all playoff-caliber teams, only lending more credence to the validity of her remarks. It wasn’t just Hammon who echoed such skepticism. Both Kenny “The Jet” Smith and Candace Parker on Inside the NBA echoed similar sentiments.
Smith has since re-evaluated, going as far as to say “Brunson has been the best basketball player in the Eastern Conference, by far.” Parker’s kept mum on the subject after issuing a bizarre non-apology for her factually incorrect statement while using her Chicago Bears fandom as a kind of defense mechanism?
To be clear, at the time Hammon, Smith, and Parker’s thoughts regarding Brunson were neither controversial nor noteworthy. It was commonly accepted wisdom — even legions of loyal Knicks fans who watched every second of his incredible star turn in the 2023 playoffs had a general sense that while he might be underrated by national media personalities, Brunson probably wasn’t quite good enough to be the main man. Second-round exits, even heroic ones like he produced last season, get lost in the sauce. Without an All-Star or All-NBA berth to his credit, it was easy to paint him as a finished product with little upside remaining to push beyond the 15th-20th best player in the league.
So how has Brunson turned non-believers into disciples? Gone from viewed as a borderline All-Star to MVP buzz? How has he made a slam dunk case to garner his first All-NBA First Team berth? Step-by-step.
His individual production speaks for itself and has steadily ticked up through each iteration of this year’s team: the pre-OG Anunoby version, the “heaven on earth/we are walking to a title” January version, and finally the two-and-a-half injury-riddled months of “balls to the wall/whatever it takes to stack wins and stay afloat in the East” version. At each stage the team needed him to take on an even larger offensive creation load; at each stage he leveled up. Initially it was when RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley exited, then again when Julius Randle exited for the season a little less than a month later.
From the debut of OG on January 1 through January 27 (🙁) the Knicks went 12-2, including dominant victories over heavy hitters like the Denver Nuggets and Philadelphia 76ers. While OG provided the necessary balance to transform the Knicks starting five into a two-way juggernaut, the team cratered offensively whenever Brunson was off the floor, a trend that preceded his arrival and continued since.
January 1 - January 27:
Brunson ON (425 mins) - 128.5 ORtg, 103.4 DRtg, +24.9 Net
Brunson OFF (247 mins) - 103.3 ORtg, 104.7 DRtg. -1.4 Net
January 28 - end of season:
Brunson ON (1160 mins) - 123.2 ORtg, 111.5 DRtg
Brunson OFF (578 mins) - 102.3 ORtg, 114.8 DRtg
When New York was hit with the double blow of losing both OG and Randle to injuries for an extended stretch, dreams of champagne-soaked ticker tape parades down the Canyon of Heroes went out the window. It seemed their playoff future could be in jeopardy. With the conference crowded two through eight, the play-in loomed as a potential landing spot. Maybe when the regular season and play-in musics stopped, the Knicks would be left looking for a seat. With that outlook, Brunson did what blue-chip, MVP-caliber, 1A superstars do. He continued to lead the way forward.
“Coming off that trade, things were great in January,” he wrote for yesterday’s Players’ Tribune. “Then OG and Julius got hurt. And Mitchell, too. But when those two went down, we didn’t really have a timetable for them. We were just going out there every single night playing as hard as we could. The most important thing, to us, was that we were staying afloat, we were winning and we were still pointing ourselves in the direction where we were going to be successful.”
Having already picked up a heftier share of the team’s offensive burden after the OG trade, Brunson had to take it into a different stratosphere, jacking his usage up to Luka Dončić levels, all while maintaining a high level of efficiency with a bigger bullseye on him than ever before.
While Tom Thibodeau would eventually prioritize putting more shooting on the floor to complement Brunson – moving Precious Achiuwa to the bench after an offensively moribund February in favor of Deuce McBride – JB’s continued to face every possible defensive coverage possible: traps, blitzes, endless streams of doubles, even a few box-and-one sightings, all designed for one purpose: get the ball out of Brunson’s hands and make the other guys beat us.
At times these tactics were successful, but necessity breeds innovation. Looking for alternative paths to success, he’s been forced to develop counters on the fly. While his usage and time on the ball have continued to climb, the Knicks have utilized sets and plays which incorporate him much more off-ball than ever before, a necessary pivot with opposition defenses paying him the level of respect only Steph “Exception to the 1A rule” Curry routinely receives among the league’s Lilliputian stars. He’s improved not only his ability to read different coverages but to manipulate them, increasingly making teams pay as a distributor with a dizzying arsenal of dishes.
Brunson’s had to deal with an unbelievable amount of roster turnover – he’s the only remaining starter from the opening day lineup – due to mid-season trades and injuries that have increased his workload and changed his role dramatically over the course of the year, yet in each segment of the year he’s excelled, and when he’s been on the floor so has the team. Brunson’s been the lifeblood of the league’s seventh-best offense despite that offense going the last three months without another player capable of creating easy shots for Brunson nor a bench able to hold down the fort offensively when he sits. And he’s not just having a career year offensively.
While nobody could or would ever mistake him with a plus-defender, Brunson has maximized the tools he does have – namely intelligence and toughness – to force turnovers. While matching his career high in steal rate, good for a total of 70 on the season, he’s consistently put his body on the line to draw offensive fouls — 75 to be precise, of which 35 are charges drawn, second-best in the league. For the season Brunson is forcing 1.88 turnovers per game. Of course he has limitations due to his size, but his ability to compete and find ways to contribute defensively despite his workload set a tone and standard for the rest of the team to follow.
Forgetting the numbers — though Lord are the numbers plentiful — Jalen Brunson has risen to the occasion at every major inflection point. Whether it be personnel changes brought on by trade or injury, he’s been at the core of everything the Knicks have been able to achieve this season, elevating his game to shoulder a tonnage of usage on par with present day Dončić and prime James Harden and thriving while doing so.
He certainly hasn’t done it alone. Josh Hart, Donte Divincenzo, Isaiah Hartenstein, etc.: all have contributed to the Knicks’ success, but all enjoy the luxury of playing within the contours of their natural games, even if those boundaries have been pushed. They’ve been allowed to stay true to what they’re best suited for because of Brunson. His ability to continue to pick up the offensive slack as injuries piled up meant there has never been too much on anybody else’s plate. That’s the definition of a First Team All-NBA player, an exception to the rule, a superstar, an MVP-caliber player with a season to match, and, ultimately, a 1A.
