For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knicks are NBA champions. If you’re tempted to stop reading right there, please hear me out.
Let’s back up. My 9-year-old self would have been over the moon watching the Knicks clinch the title on Saturday night in San Antonio. As a kid growing up in the 1990s — the heyday of the league, as far as I’m concerned — I was a committed Knicks fan. I wore a blue and orange Knicks ball cap everywhere. I rooted for Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, John Starks, Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, and Charlie Ward. Those squads made some deep playoff runs, but always fell short. It was a thrilling, if frustrating, era.
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Over the years, my interest in the NBA faded for a variety of reasons. My winter sports fandom shifted decisively to NHL hockey and NCAA hoops. I’d rarely watch even a few minutes of professional basketball, even when championships were on the line.
But over the course of this postseason, the Knicks bandwagon started to fill up, as the team steamrolled its way to the Finals. Perhaps it was childhood nostalgia kicking in, but to my own surprise, I started following their run — despite not being able to name a single player on the roster.
That changed quickly, thanks to Jalen Brunson. The Knicks star, leader, and captain is a pleasure to support, both on and off the hardwood. He’s a family-oriented man who married his high school sweetheart, proposing to her inside their Chicagoland high school gymnasium back in 2022. They have a young daughter together. The toddler won fans’ hearts when she shouted “hi dada!” during a press conference following a key playoff win over Philadelphia. Dada burst out laughing and lost his train of thought. Charming.
Brunson’s humanity and priorities revealed themselves after Game 4 against the Spurs, in which the Knicks completed the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, overcoming a 29-point deficit to send Madison Square Garden into a frenzy. In what might be the most iconic play in franchise history, a three-point attempt by Brunson — with his team down by a point, in the waning seconds of the game — hit the front of the rim, before being tipped in by teammate OG Anunoby. After a defensive stand at the other end of the floor, the buzzer sounded, and New York took a commanding 3-1 series lead.
Against that dramatic backdrop, what could have been an ebullient Brunson postgame press conference began in unexpected fashion. With the cameras rolling and reporters champing at the bit to ask him about the epic finish to a dramatic win, Brunson opened with this statement:
“Real quick before we get started, I just want to say… my thoughts and prayers are with a friend of mine I got to meet and talk to last week. Jonathan from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Garden of Dreams Foundation. He had a heart condition, and it was just asked of me to just kind of take a video and reach out to him. But something in my mind told me to serve, try and get on FaceTime, get the chat with him. And I got the pleasure to do so. It was a quick call, but it was well worth it. I just want to say my thoughts and prayers for him and his family. I just found out some news about him today. May God rest his soul.”
He had the presence of mind in that moment to pay tribute to a child who’d just passed away. Imagine what that meant to the boy’s grieving family. Making that point came before basketball. Before the glory. Before the superlatives. It was a character moment, demonstrating how he’d carried the heavy news of Jonathan’s passing throughout that day, including during the game itself. He’d talk about what happened on the court, of course, but first things first.
A reporter in the room, stunned, followed up on those comments, saying, “Jalen, sorry about that, man,” before awkwardly turning the topic to the game-winning tip-in. It took Brunson 17 seconds to compose himself and begin his answer.
Three days later, Brunson was again rendered speechless. His Knicks had just completed yet another comeback to take home the trophy, with Brunson pouring in a heroic 45 points, leading all players by a wide margin. Knicks fans’ dreams had finally come true. “Next year” was now.
In the immediate aftermath, ABC’s Lisa Salters asked Brunson how it felt to be able to share the moment with his father, a former NBA player and current assistant coach for the Knicks. “How special to you is that?” she asked. Brunson, overcome by emotion, was at a loss for words. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. “We can see it” on your face, Salters said after 15 seconds, breaking the silence. “That’s it, you can see it,” Brunson agreed, his voice cracking.
Later that evening, in a postgame interview alongside his dad, Brunson found the words: “What he instilled in me as a kid,” the younger Brunson said, gesturing toward his father, “you never know what’s gonna happen if you just continue to work hard.”
He continued, “When you focus on just winning, you’re not focusing on yourself, you’re not focusing on the individual accolades that you can get — he kinda instilled that in me… I’m programmed to say that because I actually believe those things. It’s all about the team, and our success. If we win, everyone eats. That’s how I think of it. But that’s how he raised me. How my mom and him raised me.”
What parent wouldn’t swell with pride listening to that answer?
It’s very possible Brunson would never have had an occasion to reflect on his parents’ values, in the context of winning an NBA championship with New York, absent a selfless decision that proves his team-first mentality isn’t empty sloganeering. He famously agreed to a notably franchise-friendly contract extension in 2024, reportedly leaving more than $100 million on the table, in order to help the Knicks front office assemble the pieces for a real shot at winning it all.
That gamble has paid off. The Knicks are world champions, and Brunson is the Finals MVP and the toast of New York. (Presented with an opportunity by a journalist to poke fun at the state of Texas, where he’s now secured championships at the collegiate and NBA levels, Brunson smiled. “I love Texas. I miss the Texas taxes.”)
Brunson could have demanded and commanded a much larger paycheck. He could have been forgiven for allowing that young child’s memory to recede into the background after winning Game 4. He could have comported himself like the Spurs’ superstar, engaging in trash talk and declining to shake hands after the series concluded. He could have made a lot of different choices.
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Instead, he’s cemented his status as a Knicks legend. And based on all the available evidence, he likely cares a lot more about sharing credit with his teammates and family — and emulating his own parents’ example as he and the woman he’s loved since his teens raise a precious little girl who calls him Dada.
Jalen Brunson makes it very easy to root for him, both in basketball and in life. Hell, maybe I’ll even try to locate and dust off that old Knicks hat.
