Ask Jalen Brunson, and the Knicks’ superstar will say he doesn’t ever think about how he turned the franchise around.
But ask Mike Brown, in his first season as Brunson’s head coach, about whether his point guard already has done enough to be considered one of the franchise greats and there isn’t any hesitation.
“He’s been here long enough,” Brown said Thursday after the Knicks practiced in Tarrytown ahead of their NBA Cup semifinal in Vegas on Saturday. “He’s helped them win a lot of games. Obviously, he did start in Dallas, but he was a little younger. It wasn’t his team. He wasn’t really the guy.
“He came here, it’s his team, he’s the guy here, he’s an MVP candidate, like I said, and so what he’s doing is definitely franchise-altering, and again, that has to be taken note [of]. Not just in the MVP race but also within the community of New York.”
Brown has continued to vouch for Brunson getting league-wide recognition.
After the Knicks defeated the Bucks on Nov. 28, Brown said there’s “not enough chatter” about Brunson being an MVP candidate. He added some additional criteria to his MVP thoughts Thursday, too, by saying that it should “start and end with” the best players from the top three teams in each conference — which this year includes Cade Cunningham, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic and Brunson.
In his fourth season with the Knicks, Brunson has continued to compile career milestones and etch his name into record books — making his first All-Star Game in 2023-24 and winning the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award last season.
He has averaged 28.3 points and 6.3 assists per game this year, including 35 points across 39 minutes in the NBA Cup quarterfinals Tuesday, and has the Knicks two wins away from an in-season tournament title.
“Somebody’s gotta score, somebody’s gotta rebound, and usually if you’re a team that’s a play-in game team or you’re out of the playoffs or the bottom echelon of the playoffs, you’re not impacting it at the level that the guys that I just mentioned are,” Brown said. “And so for me, Jalen is just doing what he gets paid to do. He’s an MVP candidate in this business, and he’s just showing it again to everybody.”
Saturday will mark the fourth time in 25 games that the Knicks and Magic have met, seemingly planting the seeds of a budding rivalry that could renew on the postseason stage. But despite how the first three games went — with Orlando winning two games and handing the Knicks their only home loss — Brown pushed back on the notion that this matchup has become a rivalry.
Last year, the Pistons emerged as a budding rival of the Knicks because of their playoff series. The first three meetings between the Magic and the Knicks didn’t have any stakes attached, but that’ll change Saturday in Las Vegas.
“It’s a little tough just because I don’t think — maybe at the beginning of the year, but neither team has been completely healthy when we played each other,” Brown said. “I don’t necessarily feel like it’s on the rivalry level yet. But it can be in due time, but I don’t think it’s there yet.”
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