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TORONTO — Jalen Brunson spent all of last season putting rival teams to bed.
His crossovers were like a light kiss on the forehead. His jumper tucked them in. His and-1 finishes turned out the lights.
New York’s captain won last season’s NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award, an honor that goes to someone who routinely wills their team to victory in the game’s most intense moments. Brunson did it in the regular season and the playoffs. He did it while being defended by players three inches taller, some 20 pounds heavier. A scorer’s scorer.
A season later, Brunson has flipped the script. He doesn’t need to pop up in teams’ nightmares much anymore. He’s been doing his work early, and the Knicks are reaping the benefits more often than not in the fourth quarter.
Tuesday night, when New York took down the Toronto Raptors, 117-101, in the NBA Cup quarterfinals, was the latest and loudest example of Brunson’s newest endeavor. He scored 35 points, 20 of which came in the first quarter. Brunson is averaging 10.6 points per game in first quarters this season. Only the Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Dončić is averaging more, and he has played in five fewer games.
“When you have one of the best players in the NBA on your team and you get to see him do what he does at a high level, it’s always fun,” Karl-Anthony Towns said.
The Knicks had one thing going for them in the opening minutes against Toronto: Jalen Brunson. The defense was nonexistent — New York gave up 39 points, which is usually a death sentence for most teams. However, Brunson kept the Knicks afloat, putting up everything with precision. All of Brunson’s 20 first-quarter points came off jumpers. Each one. It was either a pull-up 3 in someone’s face or his patented drive-and-step-back midrange shot.
There was a moment with about two minutes left in the first quarter when you had to semi-seriously ask yourself whether Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point scoring record was in jeopardy. There wasn’t going to be a conspiracy behind this performance, though. This would have been captured in 4D for eternity.
This felt like one of those nights, the type that defines and immortalizes the great scorers who have squeaked their sneakers on an NBA court.
“He bailed us out offensively in that first quarter,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. “We were able to score with them or keep it close because Jalen had a big first quarter, which he, obviously, is more than capable of doing. That’s just who he is, when you talk about MVP candidate of the league.”
There’s nothing Josh Hart likes more than taking jabs at Brunson. It pains one to compliment the other, especially when asked to do so while sitting right next to each other. Hart has been front and center for many special Brunson nights. They were college teammates at Villanova and have been teammates for several years in New York, where Brunson has ascended into stardom.
And yet, even Hart had to concede that even he catches himself saying, “Damn!” when Brunson gets into one of those zones. Tuesday was one of those moments.
Of course, though, praise couldn’t come before a poke at one of his best friends.
“It’s hard not to watch when you don’t get the ball,” Hart jokingly said. “There’s nothing else to really do but watch.
“Fortunately, he’s an extremely gifted scorer. I’m happy he’s on our side.”
When asked to speak about himself or his performances, Brunson is typically nonchalant about it all. “The ball was going through the hoop,” he said after Tuesday’s performance, a night when he finished 13-of-19 from the field. Brunson speaks with genuine humbleness. He also speaks with a matter-of-factness that resembles a killer, which, on the basketball court, he is. There’s enough evidence to point to throughout the years.
A case could be made that the Knicks’ poster boy is, pound for pound, the best scorer in the NBA. He put the ball in the basket at all three levels. He scores off the dribble. He’s an efficient spot-up shooter. He gets to the line. Brunson does all of this while being generously listed at 6 feet 2. He’s nowhere near the fastest player in the NBA. He might not be able to jump over a stack of phone books anymore.
Brunson gets by with elite footwork that is second to none and that Brown compares to Kobe Bryant’s. Brunson’s ability to routinely play off two feet keeps him in control of himself and a defender. It’s the fundamentals that separate him from a lot of the other elite scorers in the NBA.
“We had a conversation about this in our coaches meeting this morning,” Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković said before the Raptors and Knicks faced off in New York late last month. “(Brunson) is the type of player I can put in the same conversations as Luka Dončić and Nikola Jokić. They’re guys who just play at their own pace. You can’t speed them up. Their awareness is amazing. At every point in time, they know where the hand of the defensive player is, what is the footwork, how they can get by somebody, how they can get to their sweet spots on the floor. … He’s elite.
“Just like you said, he’s not the fastest, not the strongest, but his skill level and shooting ability is amazing. It makes him one of the biggest offensive weapons in the league.”
The Knicks want to be able to take down teams without having to rely on Brunson bailing them out like he did in the first quarter Tuesday night in Toronto. That’s a good goal to have.
With that said, very few are as good at scoring as Brunson. Sometimes letting him blackout is the best course of action.
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James L. Edwards III is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the New York Knicks. Previously, he covered the Detroit Pistons at The Athletic for seven seasons and, before that, was a reporter for the Lansing State Journal, where he covered Michigan State and high school sports. Follow James L. on Twitter @JLEdwardsIII
