Every June, NBA teams try to do something that sounds simple and almost never is: figure out who, five or ten years down the line, will have the ball in his hands when a season comes down to one possession. They measure height, wingspan, age, explosiveness, shooting percentages and imagined upside. They look at the body, the projection, the room for development. What is much harder to predict is whether a player will grow into the moment when the biggest games arrive. Whether he can take responsibility and do the thing he is paid to do.
For a long time, Jalen Brunson lived in that blind spot of US basketball. Of course, everyone knew who he was, they just misread the things that mattered most. Everything that makes his game recognizable today was there long before New York… The patience, the control of tempo, the feel for contact, the calm in late-game situations and the rare ability to keep his level in big games. Still, the NBA did not spend much time looking at him as a future star. It saw a smaller guard, an excellent college player and a professional, but also a reliable backup point guard. It saw almost everything except what he might eventually become.
What the League Failed to See
His performance in the NBA finals against the San Antonio Spurs carried that feeling. To be clear, Brunson did not suddenly become a player capable of deciding major games. He had been doing that for years, only in places where he was never fully trusted. Now, after leading the New York Knicks to an NBA title and becoming the face of one of the league’s biggest franchises, his career can serve as a reminder, perhaps even a warning, of how wrongly the league can sometimes value talent.
On one side is Victor Wembanyama, a player the world knew before he ever put on an NBA jersey. A project of the future, the young man around whom a new era of the Spurs was immediately being built. On the other side is Brunson, a player everyone watched, but did not truly see for what he was. He won at every level, became a college champion twice, was the national player of the year and arrived as a fully formed point guard from Villanova’s major program. He just did not look big enough.
When Potential Matters More Than Winning
The NBA can be strangely blind to players who do not fit its preferred image of greatness. He was too short for the ideal modern guard. He lacked the explosiveness the league likes to see right away. His wingspan did not stir much imagination. On top of that, he did not arrive as a teenager waiting to be molded, but as a formed college player, and those players are often given the label of having a limited ceiling by NBA scouts.
His talent was never really the question, it just did not come in packaging that immediately caught the eye. And yet, even then, he was doing what he still does today. He knew when to change speeds and how to do it, he read the defense well, used his body properly, found good angles, protected the ball and made the right decisions.
The NBA has become increasingly obsessed with what might be, with potential. Sometimes so much that it misses what is already happening. Brunson was a two-time champion with Villanova, a player who knew how to handle major games and never ran from responsibility. Still, in the 2018 draft, he was taken only with the 33rd pick. Some players selected before him are now forgotten, names such as 13th pick Jerome Robinson or 15th pick Troy Brown Jr., along with Zhaire Smith, Jacob Evans and others. Many of them are no longer in the league, and even when they were, they never came close to Brunson’s career. But that is how the league works. Every year, general managers and their staffs try to predict the future, and they can become so absorbed in that task that they sometimes overlook a player who has already learned how to win.
Dallas Had Him and Still Missed Him
In Dallas, there was first a cloud of doubt because he did not sign a contract until after he played Summer League, after which he received a four-year deal. He was a reliable player off the bench and quickly became an increasingly important part of the team. Even then, he was not fully recognized. The Mavericks had Luka Dončić, a basketball genius visible from the last row of the arena. With a player like that, everything else can easily become secondary. Brunson grew alongside Luka, but for a long time he seemed like someone who belonged in his orbit, a player whose value was tied to the bigger star next to him.
That is where Dallas made a mistake that looks larger today than it did at the time. Brunson was not at the center of attention, and these things in the NBA rarely happen out of pure ignorance. More often, they happen because different priorities are set. The Mavericks were thinking about flexibility, future moves, the luxury tax, the ideal star to place next to Dončić. They were looking toward the market, the possibility of bringing in a bigger name, a project that might one day look perfect. In all of that, they missed what was right in front of them…
New York Finally Saw the Real Brunson
Brunson left for New York in 2022, and at the time many said the Knicks had overpaid a good player. This time, perhaps for the first time in a long while, the Knicks got the bet right. They brought in a player who became a star and gave them stability and winning character. They brought in a player who at first glance did not look like someone who would save a battered franchise, but who carried himself like someone who knew exactly what he was doing.
New York does not tolerate uncertainty well. At Madison Square Garden, the game is played under a different kind of spotlight. Every loss carries more weight, every run of missed shots or defeats becomes material for serious criticism. For that reason, every star has to learn to live with pressure that does not end when the game does. Brunson fit into all of that without trying to be bigger than the franchise. He simply repeated the same things every night until New York realized it had received what it had lacked for years – a player it could trust.
The Craft of a Different Kind of Star
There is something almost old-fashioned about his game, a sense of craft that feels increasingly rare. Brunson is a master of small advantages. His first step is not always spectacular, but it is precise. His pull-up in the midrange looks like a drill he has repeated several thousand times. He is not someone who will always beat his defender with speed, but he often outthinks him with patience. In a league that loves verticality, Brunson has built his career on good angles, balance and an even rhythm of play.
That is why his big games sometimes do not always look spectacular, but throughout the NBA Finals, Brunson kept finding ways to matter. And that is a special kind of talent, and in June, that kind of control tends to become more valuable than the plays that look better in highlights. After all, that is why it felt almost destined that he would seal the championship with 45 points, in a game in which the Knicks scored 94.
The Contract That Changed the Knicks’ Future
Today he is the Knicks’ captain, the face of the team and a player who accepted less money than he could have received for the sake of the franchise’s future. During 2024, he could have waited another year and signed a supermax contract worth $269 million. Instead, he chose to take $156 million immediately. He gave up $113 million, and the Knicks used that space to build around him. Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby were brought in. His contract gives him a player option in 2028, after which he can sign a five-year deal worth $418 million.
It says a lot about the relationship built between him and the organization. Brunson found in New York a club that saw him more clearly than the previous one had. The Knicks found in him a true leader.
From Underestimated to Unavoidable
Now comes the hardest part. Brunson has already passed through the stage of being underestimated. In the future, he will face a different kind of pressure, the pressure of great expectations. The Finals against the Spurs could mark the beginning of a new definition of his career. Now, his story becomes one of the great player transformations of the modern NBA. Nothing was handed to him in advance. He did not have the luxury of being seen as the future until he became the present of the NBA. He had to work a long time to earn his current status. From Villanova to Dallas, and later to New York, from a good signing to the captain of a finalist, his career has been a series of small corrections to one large mistaken evaluation.
Brunson’s career has become a reminder of how often the league falls in love with the idea of talent before it recognizes the habits that actually win games. In his case, the winning part was always there. It just took the NBA longer than it should have to treat it the right way. Jalen Brunson was never the next wonder in the way Cooper Flagg is expected to be, but he has shown that he knows how wonders are made. That is why New York is in ecstasy now.
All he needed was to remain what he has always been, calm when the game tightens, stubborn when things are not going well, brave enough to take the ball and smart enough to know what to do with it.
The league spent years overlooking Jalen Brunson. New York, for once, saw him on time.