Fatigue had caught up to Jalen Brunson. For two grueling months of playoff basketball, he had seemed immune to it, growing stronger in the game’s last minutes just as his opponents would begin to fade. The pattern repeated itself throughout the NBA Finals, when the youthful San Antonio Spurs and their sinewy phenom Victor Wembanyama wilted in the fourth quarter, bricking free throws and committing mystifying turnovers. Brunson and his teammates, however, consistently rallied, turning deficits into leads, and leads into wins, including a stunning 29-point comeback in game four. The most concise explanation for how the New York Knicks won their first title in more than a half-century is that they simply outlasted everyone else.
On his fourth day as an NBA champion, however, Brunson’s voice bore the raspiness of a man running on fumes, his responses clipped and halting. The night before, he had planned on staying up to watch Argentina’s opening match in the World Cup but dozed off, waking up only after Lionel Messi had completed a vintage hat trick. “I was pissed,” he told me as we spoke in a hotel suite overlooking Central Park.
It’s Good to Be King
Brunson had just come from CBS, where he and his father, Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson, sat for an interview with Gayle King and Nate Burleson — another stop in a post-title media tour that stretched from daytime television to late night. By then, Brunson had already appeared alongside his fellow Knicks starters on Good Morning America, Today, and the Tonight Show and also made solo appearances on The View and First Take. That evening, he and Josh Hart were expected in the Bronx to toss the first pitch at a Yankees game. A friend’s wedding in New Jersey was on tap for that weekend. And in between, Brunson and the Knicks would be cheered on by some 2 million fans at a ticker-tape parade that culminated in Mayor Zohran Mamdani giving each player a key to the city.
On a scale that begins with OG Anunoby, the reserved hero behind that last-second tip-in in game four, and ends with Karl-Anthony Towns, who seems destined for a career in broadcasting, Brunson falls somewhere in the middle. He hosts a podcast with Hart and Matt Hillman, The Roommates Show, yet remains fairly guarded in media appearances. He is cerebral without being self-serious, funny without trying too hard to be, and, every now and then, manages to produce a line that lingers. “You’re allowed to think about the worst possible scenario,” Brunson said after the Knicks’ win in game four, “but you gotta go out there and do something about it.”
The Knicks entered this season with their loftiest expectations since the ’90s, as owner James Dolan made it clear that a Finals appearance was a minimum requirement. They showed promise early on by winning the NBA Cup, the league’s in-season tournament, and with 53 regular-season victories, they were considered a top contender to emerge from the NBA’s Eastern Conference. Still, the playoffs were widely viewed as a two-horse race between the Spurs and the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder, a pair of Western Conference juggernauts that each won more than 60 games. But something shifted in the first round, when the Atlanta Hawks took a 2-1 series lead over the Knicks. “I don’t think it was a situation where we were nervous,” Brunson told me. “I think it was just a wake-up call like, ‘This team is good. We can’t overlook them. We know that we need to play better. How can we do that?’ And then as a group, we realized that our attention to detail wasn’t where it needed to be. So did we flip a switch or did we just kind of refocus? I don’t really know, but whatever we did, it worked.” The Knicks comfortably won the remaining games in the series, including a 51-point blowout in the decider, and did not lose again until game three of the NBA Finals, when Donald Trump showed up at Madison Square Garden.
By the time they entered the Finals, the Knicks dominated the conversation in the city and drove the social life of its inhabitants. A playoff game, for both die-hard and bandwagon fans, became appointment viewing, a reason to gather with friends at teeming bars and makeshift watch parties — and to let the children stay up past their bedtime. It was a rolling spectacle that everyone could talk about at the office or gym, in an Uber or on the subway. While New York has two NBA franchises, the Brooklyn Nets — who relocated from New Jersey nearly 15 years ago — could never challenge the Knicks’ supremacy. There is no split in allegiances as there are in other parts of the city’s sports landscape, where Mets fans revel in the Yankees’ misfortune and vice versa. The Knicks, for a few thrilling weeks, reminded everyone that they are New York’s favorite team with all five boroughs behind them.
Brunson was still processing everything the morning I met him at the Mandarin Oriental. The championship hadn’t fully sunk in yet, he said, and he suspected it wouldn’t until he had some remove from all the confetti and Champagne and “Knicks in Five” chants. “I haven’t internalized it yet,” Brunson told me. “But I know that down the line, I’ll feel the effects of it.” After the final buzzer sounded for game five in San Antonio, his usual stone face was cracked with streaks of tears. And there had been moments of reflection in the days that followed, like the long stretches of silence in the car with his wife, Ali Marks Brunson, the two staring at each other in elated disbelief. “I haven’t been as emotional,” he said. “I think the further I get away from it, the more I’ll realize what happened.”
What happened was a citywide exorcism after more than 50 years of falling short, an opportunity for New Yorkers to spill into the streets. It was also vindication: for the Knicks, who saw Brunson as a franchise cornerstone when few others did; for his father, who pushed him relentlessly as a child and hasn’t stopped since; and for Brunson, who could permanently silence the critics. “This completely changes everyone’s opinion of him going forward,” Ali told me six days later. “If you’re going to talk about Jalen, you’re going to have to mention that he was a Finals MVP, that he was a champion.”
Forty-three floors below, Columbus Circle hummed with commuters still basking in the victory, decked out in Knicks gear, adults who might transform into giddy children if they caught a glimpse of Brunson — to say nothing of the actual youth of New York, for whom he is an icon. The day we spoke, Kim Gordon wore his jersey on The Tonight Show, while a sea of No. 11’s lined the parade route the next morning in lower Manhattan. Brunson acknowledges things will “be different” but is perhaps understating the new heights of his fame. He prides himself on being a normal guy; when he says “I don’t like to think of myself as a certain somebody,” it’s believable, even if it’s a bit absurd coming from someone already dubbed the “King of New York” before he won a ring.
“I feel like I used to be able to be kind of low-key and blend in,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll happen around here anymore, at least for now. But it’s a good problem to have.”
Photo: Billy Dinh
They doused the trophy in Champagne with Timothée Chalamet somehow right in there with them. “That was all you,” the actor said, as he embraced Brunson in the locker room. Brunson cradled the Larry O’Brien trophy, as did Towns, who strutted through the arena clutching it and smoking a cigar. Fans at home had a window into all the revelry when Anunoby went live on Instagram and couldn’t figure out how to end the stream. (A boozy Mikal Bridges spilled his guts on the platform a couple days later.) The celebration rolled on aboard the flight from Texas to New York. “Everyone worked so hard for that moment,” Brunson recalls, “and being able to enjoy that with everyone right after the fact, just us, was awesome.”
Brunson relished that night, but one gets the impression his default Saturday is a Netflix binge at home in the suburbs. The next morning, he pulled into his gated community in Westchester, Larry O’Brien trophy in hand, to a scene that resembled a high-school quarterback’s homecoming: the blocks lined with balloons and homemade signs congratulating him. He and Ali spent that Sunday relaxing and playing with their daughter, Jordyn, who turns 2 in July. A few neighbors came by to salute the newly crowned champion, while more hugs and handshakes awaited when he took his dog for a walk. “It was awesome,” Brunson said. “It wasn’t overwhelming at all, which is why I love where I live.” Occasionally, he’d wander into the kitchen to marvel at the trophy on his counter, the surreal sight of his childhood dream temporarily converted into home décor.
Much has been made of Wembanyama’s pilgrimage last summer to China, where he trained with Shaolin monks, yet it is Brunson — with his unflappable stoicism and a discipline that veers on devotional — who feels truly monastic. By several accounts, including his own, he inherited his sense of calm from his mother, Sandra, whom Ali describes as “Zen-like.”
“She does a lot, and she handles everything with grace,” said Ali, who works as a licensed physical therapist. “I think Jalen saw that growing up, and he’s able to implement that.” Like his mom, Brunson is measured and deliberate, and he has an uncommon ability to tune out even the most deafening noise around him. He went dark on social media through the playoffs and, as a result, missed some of the Knicks fever that swept through the city: the videos of watch parties, street celebrations, and general euphoria that flooded one’s timeline.
The Spurs couldn’t rattle him, try as they might. Wembanyama — securing his spot in the pantheon of Madison Square Garden villains alongside Reggie Miller and Trae Young — tried to bully him, but Brunson kept getting back up, dusting himself off after every hard foul, whether it was called or not. Knicks fans were apoplectic over the Spurs’ sharp elbows, not to mention the officiating. So, too, were the Knicks. Footage surfaced online of Brunson raising a glass with his teammates at one of their many post-title parties. The toast? “Fuck Wemby.” (Brunson declined to comment further on that.) In the fourth quarter of game two, Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox seemed to goad him, standing in his face, but somehow Brunson managed to walk away unbothered.
His dad, however, was not. Rick Brunson went to the scene of the scrum and told Fox to knock it off. The father-son relationship sits at the center of the Jalen Brunson story, both personal and professional. If Brunson inherited his unbendable poise from his mom, then it was his dad who braced him for the harsh realities of the NBA.
As a child, Jalen eagerly sought his father’s tutelage. Rick had stints on eight different teams, including the Knicks, over nine seasons. He told Jalen that he had the blueprint on how to make it to the pros, and his son absorbed every detail. In the summer months, Jalen would wait for Rick at the foot of the stairs, desperate to tag along on his dad’s offseason workouts. Rick rode Jalen hard, as evidenced by the now-viral home videos of the two practicing on a cracked outdoor court. “Tired is for the weak,” Rick can be heard saying in the clip, before demanding his young son perform the same drill again. That sort of thing isn’t for everyone, but, as Jalen has said, it worked for him. Rick would ask if he wanted to make it to the NBA and if he was willing to do what it took; each time, the answer was “yes.”
The apprenticeship continued when Jalen went to Villanova, where Rick would show up at the dorms so they could get some shots up, and it has continued in the NBA, where Rick has served as both Jalen’s advocate and coach. During the Mavericks’ 2022 playoff run, when Jalen emerged as one of their standout performers, Rick turned up the heat on the team’s front office over his son’s impending free agency. If the franchise wanted to retain his son, he told ESPN, it would have to pay him accordingly. There would be “no discount.”
“We’ve got to figure out if Dallas wants him,” Rick said at the time. Then-owner Mark Cuban, meanwhile, complained that his negotiations with Jalen “went south when the parents got involved.” (While Jalen and Cuban later made a kind of peace, all was not forgotten. Following the Knicks’ title-clinching win this month, Rick told a reporter to relay a message: “Tell Mark ‘thank you.’”)
Jalen signed with the Knicks that offseason, weeks after the team hired Rick as an assistant coach under Tom Thibodeau. Rick had previously coached for several teams, including the Denver Nuggets, Chicago Bulls, and Minnesota Timberwolves; he resigned from the last in 2018 following allegations of improper conduct toward women, which he has denied. He was coaching high-school basketball in Camden, New Jersey, before the Knicks gave him an opportunity to return to the pros, resulting in father and son coming to New York with something to prove.
The captain keeps his inner circle small. Rick was with him when he arrived at the Mandarin Oriental, as was his younger sister, Erica, and his childhood friend Connor Cashaw, both of whom are part of his team of representatives. Rick, wearing a navy suit with a Larry O’Brien trophy pin on his lapel, moved smoothly through the room, speaking closely with Cashaw and Jalen’s security guard in a gravelly baritone.
The Mavericks might have made a more lucrative offer to Brunson in 2022, but the Knicks were able to present him with both a larger role and the chance to join what feels like a family business. Knicks president Leon Rose, a longtime power agent, had previously represented both Rick and Jalen. The two families are extremely close. Rose has known Jalen since birth, and Jalen is currently represented by Rose’s son, Sam, an agent at CAA.
Rick had never coached one of his son’s teams before, and the dynamic intrigued them both. Jalen has said that the past four seasons with the Knicks have provided bonding opportunities that weren’t always possible in childhood, when Rick was consumed with the grind of an 82-game NBA season. But on the sideline, Rick has continued to supply the tough coaching of Jalen’s childhood summers. In game four of the Knicks’ first-round series against the Hawks, cameras caught the two appearing to have a tense back-and-forth during a timeout. “I think his dad can tell him everything, whatever’s going on, even if it’s tough conversations,” said Bridges. “He trusts and listens to his dad.”
Those close to them say they are able to compartmentalize their relationship on the court. “His dad will come into our house, and we don’t talk about basketball. It’s just about life and vacations and things that we need to do around the house, just like normal day-to-day stuff,” said Ali. “They’re different people on the court. He’s a coach, and then once they leave the court, it’s just like back to normal.”
Rick is both fiercely protective of his son and unwilling to indulge in the surrounding hype, a balance that surfaced following the Knicks’ title win. After the clinching game in San Antonio, he intervened when a deputy sheriff attempted to move Jalen amid the chaotic scene on the court. Then, during the media blitz, Rick took him down a peg. Amid the adulation following Jalen’s epic game five — scoring 45 of the Knicks’ 94 points — Rick said he still believes that Patrick Ewing is the greatest Knick to date. When I asked him later where Jalen ranks among New York City athletes, Rick expanded on his view.
“You have to understand we strive for perfection,” Rick said. “I’ve always pushed him. I’m going to continue to push him. People get caught up in the things he’s done in a short period of time, which is tremendous. I mean, look, I’m a proud father, but you have to do this for a long time to be great. I tell him that all the time. You can’t take away from the great ones — the Walt Fraziers, the Willis Reeds, the Patrick Ewings. They did it for a long period of time. So we still have a long way to go, but we’ll get there.”
Rick keeps Jalen’s trophies at his home, a reminder that they are a package deal: father and son, moving in lockstep, united by the same goal. The Finals MVP has now joined the collection, but Rick already has his eye on additional hardware. “You always think about next season,” Rick said. “That’s how his mind works. We want to get back to where we were this season and hopefully have a chance to compete for another championship. You want more.”
There are perks to enjoy in the meantime. After our interview, a publicist for the Knicks asked Jalen if he wanted tickets to this month’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock. Before he could respond, Rick chimed in: “Just say ‘yeah’ to everything.”
That Brunson is even in the conversation to be the franchise’s greatest player would have been unthinkable when he signed four years ago. At that point, he had proved to be a good complimentary player, but he was not yet a consensus centerpiece like Luka Dončić, the transcendent playmaker alongside whom Brunson spent his first four seasons in Dallas.
Brunson’s game is not as intuitively understood as other NBA stars’. LeBron James stands out for his power and athleticism, Steph Curry for his unlimited shooting range. At six-foot-two, Brunson plays decidedly below the rim, and his skills — like the balletic footwork or ability to finish through contact — do not inspire awe in the same way as a chase-down block or a distant three-pointer.
Some questioned why the Knicks were paying such a sizable contract — four years for $104 million — to a second-round draft pick with a career scoring average that clocked in at a shade under 12 points per game. The signing marked a radical departure in the Knicks’ approach to roster construction. Throughout the 2010s, the franchise had tried, and mostly failed, to lure marquee names to the Garden. LeBron spurned them in 2010. Nine years later, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving did the same and, even more humiliatingly, signed with the transplanted Nets.
But when the Knicks hired Rose in 2020, Dolan took a step back from the team’s basketball operations. Rose rejected the big-game hunting that had come to define the franchise’s offseasons, opting instead for a methodical approach to team building. In 2023, the Knicks acquired two of Brunson’s former Villanova teammates, Hart and Donte DiVincenzo, the latter of whom was dealt to the Timberwolves the following year alongside Julius Randle and others in exchange for Towns. They had also recently landed Bridges, another Villanova alum, from Brooklyn. The moves paid off. Towns has proved to be a better fit with Brunson than Randle, and the presence of his former college teammates — or the “Nova Knicks” — improved the team’s harmony both on and off the court. They also affirmed what had already become obvious: This was Brunson’s team.
In Brunson, New York didn’t land a finished product but a player who was still ascending — and, perhaps most crucially, one who wanted to be here. The Knicks have made the playoffs in each of his first four seasons with the team, after qualifying for the postseason just five times in the more than two decades leading into his arrival. In 2024, Brunson reinforced his commitment by taking a team-friendly deal rather than waiting a year for a larger extension, leaving $113 million on the table in order to give the Knicks greater financial flexibility.
The decision only endeared him further to a fan base that had already fallen in love with a player becoming known for delivering in clutch moments. While Durant had said that he “didn’t want to be the savior of the Knicks or New York,” Brunson, by contrast, seemed to embrace the role. But he and the Knicks never fully quieted the critics until they ripped through the playoffs this spring. The team was good, the prevailing opinion went for much of the past four seasons, but probably not championship good. Brunson faced parallel skepticism: Sure, he had proved to be among the NBA’s best, but could he lead a team that wins four playoff rounds? Brunson’s standing within the organization was never questioned. He was named Knicks captain in 2024, a title that has made him more outspoken. “The biggest thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here is just how much more vocal he’s become,” Bridges told me.
Case in point: He used his voice in January, when the Knicks lost eight of their first ten games to start the New Year. After a 17-point loss at home to the Dallas Mavericks that prompted boos from fans, he addressed his teammates in the locker room before the coaches entered. He recalls telling them, “Long story short: We need to be better or we’re all not going to be here much longer.”
“I don’t want to say we weren’t focused. I just think we weren’t aggressive. We weren’t doing the things we were supposed to do,” Brunson said now of the grim stretch. “We took a nosedive, and it happens. It’s all about how you respond in those situations.” Another message Brunson instilled in his teammates during that bleak period, said Bridges, was simply to “calm down.”
Brunson’s remarks underscored the enormous pressure surrounding the Knicks, which was constructed to win a title — and could just as readily be dismantled if it fell short. The front office had already fired Thibodeau last year after he had guided the team to its first Conference Finals in a quarter-century. “Our organization is singularly focused on winning a championship for our fans,” Rose said last June, shortly before hiring Mike Brown as the team’s next head coach.
Following Brunson’s postgame pep talk, the Knicks rattled off eight wins in a row. Essentially, they thought about the worst possible scenario, then did something about it.
Few were more vocal in their doubts about Brunson than Becky Hammon, the head coach of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. During an appearance on ESPN in 2023, Hammon, a former star player herself, said the Knicks weren’t in a position to win a title because they lacked a “1A dude.” Brunson, she argued at the time, was “too small” to be that guy, citing the league’s historical trends. On Instagram Live, Bridges said that Brunson used her skepticism as “fuel.” (A more sober Bridges later clarified to me that Brunson “doesn’t go to sleep worrying about nobody else’s words.”)
When I asked about Hammon’s comments, Brunson passed on the chance to gloat or to credit her for any added motivation. “I don’t want to say it drove me,” he said. “She definitely wasn’t the only person that said anything, so I’m not even going to single her out by giving her an answer. I said I didn’t care about it then. I’m not going to answer it now. I feel like I don’t really have to at this point anymore. I did what I was supposed to do.” It is telling, though, that Brunson said he felt “relief” from winning the title, which may speak to the dual burden of expectation and uncertainty that has accompanied his tenure in New York. “I think there was a lot of pressure,” Ali said. “If he wasn’t able to achieve this, it proves everybody right that New York needed someone different and they made the wrong choice in Jalen.”
If the team had fallen short of the ultimate prize again, it’s easy to imagine Knicks fans spending this month debating the merits of Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks star who had long been the subject of trade rumors and who is now heading to the Miami Heat. Even Brunson admitted he doesn’t know if the team would have entered next season with the same core had they not won it all.
Instead, Brunson enters his first summer as an NBA champion with plenty to do. There will be a family trip, though he isn’t sure where, and at the end of the month he will host his annual basketball camp in the Chicago area, where he attended high school. In the fall, the start of the new season will bring rings and, at long last, a championship banner raised to the Garden rafters. “We did everything we could to bring something back here,” said Brunson. “The character and then everything that this team embodies, it means a lot to me. It means a lot to the city, and obviously having a championship puts the cherry on top.”
And there’s another celebration in the works — at the White House. Dolan publicly accepted the president’s invitation, which would make the Knicks the first NBA champion to visit while Trump is in office. Hours before Dolan’s announcement, Brunson appeared noncommittal when I asked about a White House trip. “We haven’t discussed it,” Brunson said. “But as a team, we’ll discuss it and we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
For now, there was a parade to attend with a couple million of Brunson’s friends. Hard-core Knicks fans began staking out their seats along the route the night before, while others hired “line-sitters” to do the waiting for them. On parade day, Brunson rode the float with his wife, sister, and parents, alongside a coterie of Celebrity Row regulars, including Spike Lee, Tracy Morgan, and Mariska Hargitay. Lee later said he felt “blessed” to be on a float alongside the MVP. “I’ve never been to a parade, ever,” he told an MSG Networks reporter. “I’m glad it’s this one!” Meanwhile, Hargitay told the same reporter that to be among Brunson and his family “is just the most extraordinary feeling I think I’ve ever had.”
As he made his way along the route, alternating between holding the Larry O’Brien trophy and his daughter, he looked loose, buoyant, and, yes, relieved. “Everyone gravitates to the Knicks, and I’ve seen that since I got here,” said Brunson. He admits he didn’t fully understand the team’s resonance in the city as a child, when his dad wore the uniform and took him to the Garden. “Now I see it,” he said.
At City Hall, Mayor Mamdani gave him a shout-out for his “pay cut,” before Brunson stepped to the podium himself. He was punchier than usual, tiptoeing up to the edge of calling out his critics before pulling back. “There’s a lot of people who have a lot of opinions,” Brunson said. “But when you prove them wrong, you really don’t have to say shit to them.”
The festivities later shifted to the exclusive Chez Margaux, where Knicks players partied with Teyana Taylor, Cardi B, and Adrien Brody. A few hours after being honored at City Hall, draped in orange and blue banners, Brunson addressed his kingdom on X.
“New York !!! Where we at???”
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If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 29, 2026, issue of
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