To fully appreciate how Jalen Brunson has redeemed the New York Knicks, who on Thursday night saw off the Philadelphia 76ers to reach the last eight of the NBA playoffs, you must understand the context and history of point guard for the team. After team owner James Dolan was handed the Knicks on a silver platter by his Cablevision-founding father in the late 1990s, the Knicks slipped into chaos and degradation. The conspicuous void at the point guard position reflected the lack of leadership on and off the court. This exacerbated the team’s dysfunction, as they lacked a true floor leader to galvanize the mismatch
Until Brunson’s arrival, that is. The 27-year-old isn’t merely turning the Knicks into a contender. He is fulfilling the dreams of generations of Knicks fans who have only known losing or forgotten what winning feels like. The son of Rick Brunson, the former Knicks third-string point guard and John Chaney protégé known for a journeyman career full of hustle, defense and energy, Jalen shares his father’s role-playing heart while imbued with the championship desire and failure of Rick’s doomed 1999 finals squad. Little Jalen was bouncing around that last great Knicks team, attached to his father’s hip at team practices, where Tom Thibodeau was an assistant coach to Jeff Van Gundy, and Leon Rose, Rick’s agent, were mainstays.
Rose is now president of the Knicks, Thibodeau is the team’s head coach and Jalen Brunson their star player. The trio are uniquely positioned to continue the mission of that 1999 team, a group of lovable dudes who played for each other and a take-no-shit head coach.
Brunson has three men in his corner – his father, Rose and Thibodeau – who can provide unique points of view on the Knicks’ recent failures and, further back, their glory days. No Knicks player since 1999 has had that luxury of history and context. Thibodeau is a taskmaster but he has also instilled discipline in a franchise that has too often descended into disarray. As for Rose, where Dolan’s previous front-office executives targeted washed-up former stars and mediocre stopgaps to man the point, Rose chose Brunson based on fit. Rick was Rose’s first client. The two know each other with unmatched familiarity. Rose knew Jalen possessed the potential to fill the team’s most glaring hole because Rick had trained him since birth.
Even the wildly unpopular Dolan deserves some credit for not meddling and screwing everything up. And who could forget Mark Cuban and Nico Harrison at Brunson’s former team, Dallas, who repeated the Steve Nash sin yet again, 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 from the Mavericks to find Brunson with the Knicks.
