In Brunson, Knicks got their franchise-altering free agent
There have been franchise-altering trades in New York sports, have there ever. The Rangers just traded for Patrick Kane, the way they traded for Mark Messier once, before Messier came here and became one of the transformative players in the history of New York sports. A hundred or so years ago the Knicks traded for Dave DeBusschere and that trade, by the great Eddie Donovan, ultimately changed everything with the old Knicks before their first championship. Then along came Earl (The Pearl) not long after, to get with them and help win the second.
The Mets traded first for Keith Hernandez, and then for Gary Carter, and the two of them became cornerstones on the best and most entertaining Mets team of them all, in 1986. Ernie Accorsi made the trade on draft day in 2004 that brought the Giants Eli Manning, the big-game quarterback who won them two more Super Bowls, one in the most famous game of football ever played by a New York team, against the 18-0 Patriots one night in Glendale, Ariz. Back in the ‘60s, the Giants traded for Y.A. Tittle.
But Reggie Jackson remains the most important free agent signing we’ve ever had around here, coming to the Yankees before the 1977 season, the one that ended with him hitting three one night, Game 6 of the ‘77 World Series at the old Stadium, on just those three swings against the Dodgers. Thirty or so years later, CC Sabathia came to town and helped pitch the Yankees to the last World Series they’ve won, and Yankee fans better not forget how important he was.
Technically Aaron Judge was a free agent, of course, when the Yankees brought him back for the $360 million. But he was one of theirs. He hit the 62 for them last season. He didn’t come here from somewhere else. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving did. Except they ended up playing just 74 games together, less than a full season, and even though they had that one run that ended with the toe of Durant’s sneaker on the line in that Game 7 against the Bucks, it’s as if they were just in New York to change planes.
Now comes Jalen Brunson, who has played himself into a conversation like this after just 65 games, and who made the entire Knicks’ nation hold its breath on Friday night when he landed awkwardly on his ankle during another improbably Knicks victory before returning to the game.
He is already as significant a free agent as the Knicks have ever had. He is currently the biggest star we’ve got, at least until the baseball season starts for real, and maybe Aaron Rodgers comes to town.
We know that Reggie said, and famously, that he was bringing his star to New York with him. It wasn’t like that with Brunson, whose father played for the Knicks once, and as well as he played in Dallas, especially last season. We knew he was good. But as Charlie Barkley said on television the other night, we didn’t know he was this good, playing like the best point guard, by a lot, the Knicks have had since Clyde. More because of the Villanova guy than anybody else, this past month has felt like Linsanity, just with a real team.
Everybody knows about all the fever dreams the Knicks have had about free agents in the past. Everybody remembers how they cleared all that cap space — and tank space — to make their run at LeBron, who was never coming here. There was that period — remember? — when Knick fans were told it was a dead-solid-perfect lock that Durant was going to come to the Garden and not the Barclays Center.
Now it turns out that the Knicks didn’t need someone bringing his star with him to the Garden. It had to be someone exactly like Jalen Brunson, even if we didn’t know it had to be somebody exactly like Jalen Brunson. At the Garden this week, he was an even bigger story than Patrick Kane, one reason:
Brunson isn’t a hockey player. He’s a Knick. Hockey matters at the Garden. Not like basketball does.
“I felt like (Brunson) was good to very good,” Jeff Van Gundy, for whom Jalen’s father once played, said on Friday. “But obviously he’s better than that. Honestly? He’s better than everybody except three people thought he was: Himself, his father, and Tom Thibodeau, who had faith that he could be this kind of player. What’s faith supposed to be? Believing what you can’t see, right? Somehow Tom had faith that Jalen could be more than anybody had seen.”
Van Gundy spoke then about watching Jalen grow up, from the time he was a little kid dribbling up and down the hallways when Van Gundy was still coaching the Knicks. The kid was growing up when Rick Brunson worked for Thibs in Chicago. Van Gundy talked about the Jalen Brunson he had seen in summer ball, and how Jalen Brunson kept getting better from one summer to the next, on his way to being so much better than just very good.
“It was clear from the time he
got on the court with the Knicks that he was the best player they had,” Van Gundy said. “And once the others saw that and accepted it, the Knicks began to just work. They fit. And the reason they fit because Jalen made them fit.”
He paused then and said, “If there one thing Jalen Brunson shows you, it is how there’s still nothing in sports that beats intelligence, and talent, and truly relentless hard work.”
Are they going to build a championship team around him? We are a long way from even thinking about that, as hot as the Knicks have been lately. Remember, we are talking about a team that has won exactly one playoff series since Van Gundy left, which means one in this century. Even one playoff series win this season would be a tremendous step forward, for everybody.
On a given night, they can beat anybody (though we need to pump the brakes on our way to the Canyon of Heroes because they beat a Celtics team without Jaylen Brown the other night). But are they ready to go toe-to-toe with the big boys in the East in the playoffs, which means Celtics or 76ers or Bucks? Even the most optimistic Knicks fans knows how much of a reach that is for now. hat we know is that they are different because of Jalen Brunson. They are the most entertaining Knicks team since Van Gundy’s best teams in the late ‘90s (and wouldn’t Jeff have loved a point guard like Brunson?). They are much more of a show and much more of a team now than they were two years ago, in the COVID season, when they finished 41-31 and fourth in the conference before getting bounced out of the playoffs by the Hawks.
No one saw this coming at the start of the year. No one saw Brunson showing up and playing like one of the most valuable guys in the league. Here he is, anyway. Here they are. The Knicks finally got their free agent.
W