In a league dominated by Nikola Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the New York Knicks have a legitimate MVP candidate on their roster too. You can read that again, backwards, or even upside down: but it’s true. Jalen Brunson has been one of the NBA’s best players this season.

He’s produced at that level on a second-seeded Knicks team that’s off to a 20-8 regular season start and has an NBA Cup Championship trophy to show for their trip to Las Vegas. His biggest advocate has been head coach Mike Brown, whose fervor has only grown as Brunson continues to add to his résumé.

Brunson is one of the best players on one of the best teams

The case for Brunson as the league’s MVP is simple. He’s the best player on the Knicks, who are a very good team. So good, in fact, that they are in second place in the Eastern Conference as of Tuesday.

That inherently qualifies him, among other players such as Cade Cunningham and Victor Wembanyama, for early discussions about who might win the league’s most prestigious individual season award.

Two huge problems stand in front of his candidacy: the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets’ leading stars. Jokic and Gilgeous-Alexander are perennial MVP candidates because of their ability to take games over for entire halves, forget quarters, and lead their teams to the top of the standings each season.

Brunson is showing that ability, but has yet to win an NBA Championship and has plenty of stereotypes to defeat regarding his 6’2″ stature as a primary option. With the NBA Cup MVP and other recent accomplishments, it feels like he might finally be turning the corner when it comes to league perception of his superstardom.

The next standard for Brunson to reach is golden

That said, even with fans leaguewide beginning to acknowledge that the 29-year-old point guard is going to regularly produce superstar-level offense, Brunson himself won’t be happy until he wins an NBA Championship.

It’s the ultimate goal of this Knicks team, being cited by the organization as the reason why they parted ways with former head coach Tom Thibodeau. While Brown has improved how the Knicks operate in several ways early on in his tenure, his reign as head coach will ultimately be defined by whether or not his team can go “all the way.”

Brunson, the team’s captain and on-court driver of their sharp focus on winning, faces the same high standard. Even if he continues to put up Michael Jordan-level statistics in the NBA Playoffs, a lack of a Larry O’Brien trophy will leave doubters saying that those who believed he was “too short” to get it done were vindicated.

There’s one way for Brunson to truly shed all of the narratives, but that won’t be why he’s so focused on it. He was going to go all-out for this trophy regardless. It doesn’t seem like he got that tired from holding up the NBA Cup.