Larry David said it best.
During a visit on “The Rich Eisen Show” last month, the acclaimed actor and writer, best known for “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” discussed his beloved New York Knicks and their greatest player, point guard Jalen Brunson. “He’s terrific. He doesn’t appear athletic at first, but then…”
David, 76, then jumped up from his seat, ready to repeat the move. “…he slithers in! Then he kind of does the [fadeaway] thing! “Where is his back going backwards?”
Eisen couldn’t stop laughing as David imitated Brunson’s leg kick while resuming his seat.
But here’s the thing: David’s not wrong. Brunson’s game has a unique and accessible quality. Brunson, 27, may be inspiring people of all ages to perfect their “old-man game,” which relies on impeccable footwork, strength, and trickery rather than athleticism, as Stephen Curry has done for the younger generation.
“Man, it’s so great to be on the other side of [his footwork] now,” Knicks guard Donte DiVincenzo, a teammate of Brunson at Villanova, told ESPN. “We’ve played one-on-one so many times over the years that I believe I know precisely what he’s going to do. Honestly, many defenders feel the same way. But he’s so clever that they don’t know when he’s going to shoot, pass, or use a step-through.
“He knows he’s not the most athletic, so he outsmarts and out-footworks people to get where he wants to go.”
The Knicks offence, sans two-time All-NBA forward Julius Randle, ranked sixth over the last six weeks of the regular season and fourth in the first two weeks of the playoffs.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope performed practically everything correctly.
The two-time NBA champion, who aimed for First Team All-Defense in 2023-2024, was not fooled by Knicks centre Jericho Sims’ perimeter screen.
The high-IQ wing correctly predicted that Brunson would reject the screen, as he frequently does. Caldwell-Pope then followed Brunson step by step as the guard backed him into the paint. He even managed to remain pretty stable for the All-Star’s first fake to the left.
Caldwell-Pope failed to capitalise on Brunson’s floater, which lofted above Nikola Jokic’s outstretched arm and struck the bottom of the net as the referee blew his whistle.
The Madison Square Garden crowd erupted.
And the reigning champion Nuggets, who trailed by 25 points following that disastrous defensive sequence, appeared completely perplexed. Denver’s guard Jamal Murray raised his hands in annoyance, while forward Aaron Gordon put his hands on his hips in exasperation, highlighting a common dilemma among teams this season: how to stop this freaking dude.
Brunson was 7-for-8 from two-point range against the Nuggets. The performance was far from an anomaly.
“What happens when you have to guard a player on the catch, then again when they dribble, and again when he picks up his dribble? There are plenty of opportunities for a defender to make a mistake. Hawks coach Quin Snyder compared Brunson’s performance to the 2022 playoff series, where he scored 24 points in Game 1, 41 in Game 2, and 31 in Game 3. Doncic was injured for the first three games. Dallas won the series six times.
Consider Game 4 of the Knicks’ first-round series with the Philadelphia 76ers. Tobias Harris, a wing defender, performed admirably overall.
In the third quarter on Sunday, he guarded Brunson one-on-one on the left wing. The first time, the New York star crossed the ball between his knees three times — left, right, and left again — before shooting. Or, to Harris, what appeared to be one. Instead, Brunson utilised a shot fake to get Harris in the air from 16 feet away, then leaned into him and fired up a jumper as the whistle blew, signalling a foul. Harris tried valiantly to land without making contact, but it was too late: Brunson’s shot was good, and he’d add the free throw.
Two minutes later, Brunson faced Harris from the identical location on the floor. This time, he dribbled between his knees four times, attempting to rock Harris to sleep. He then accelerated to his left, towards the midpost, before being cut off and retrieving the ball to reset. For Harris, it appeared to be a reset. Instead, Brunson sprinted back downhill to his left just as Harris was about to breath, assuming the job was complete — or at least delayed.
But it wasn’t. Instead, Brunson slithered to the basket for a scoop layup off the glass. By the end of the day, he had 47 points (a Knicks playoff record) and 10 assists, helping New York take a 3-1 series lead over the Sixers. Brunson logged the remarkable performance while only turning the ball over once.
Another thing to note is that Brunson’s mostly error-free performance on Sunday was typical of his season. He had a career-high 32.5% usage rate yet a career-low 9.1% turnover rate, despite playing through far more contact. According to Second Spectrum, defences blitzed Brunson as a pick-and-roll ball handler 36% more than they did the previous year.
Despite playing an NBA-high 662 minutes and utilising precise footwork frequently, Brunson had only four travelling violations throughout the season. Four. Tied for the fewest of any All-Star guard or wing.
Brunson’s star turn in New York has been years in the making.
His father, Rick Brunson, played for the Knicks in 1999, the team’s last appearance in the NBA Finals. He occasionally brought a 5-year-old Jalen into the team’s locker room, and the child took advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate the players that he had studied their games.
“Everyone would crack up. “He had their footwork down — jab steps, everything,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau, who was a New York assistant in the late 1990s, said last year when recalling his first encounter with Jalen.
“We’d tell him: ‘Do Allan Houston,’ boom, boom, boom.'”Do Latrell Sprewell, “boom, boom, boom.” He was often in the gym, and he was a sponge.” Despite his old-man characteristics as a player, Brunson frequently employs what appears to be a children’s game. It appears to be the world’s most irritating game of duck, duck, goose.
When he is not on the ball, defenders chase him around the court. Even when he has the ball on the perimeter and passes it to one of his big guys, it’s usually only to move before receiving the ball back in a better position to attack.
“It’s like he’s playing football,” Golden State guard Moses Moody told ESPN. “He’s a receiver trying to get open.”
And he intentionally avoids help when it arrives. According to Second Spectrum, Brunson refuses screens at roughly 17% of the time, the highest rate in the NBA, surprising opponents who expect him to use the block. Brunson plays off two feet, and his herky-jerky technique and off-beat rhythm make him one of the most surprising offensive players in basketball.
“We have a lot of players in the league who are extremely athletic, have long wingspans, and so on. “But if I can be deceptive and do the things I do, I can gain an advantage,” Brunson told ESPN. “And I definitely work on [my footwork] a lot.”
The evidence suggests that it works. Regardless of his height, opposing players rarely block his shoots. Some of that stems from his underestimated strength. “That first time he bumps into you with that shoulder, you’re like, ‘Damn, OK!'” Warriors guard Gary Payton II told ESPN.
This season, Brunson shot an NBA-high 330 floaters, 124 more than any other player. Only 18, or little more than 5% of them, were blocked. According to PBP Stats, only 6-7 Kawhi Leonard, 6-9 Bam Adebayo, 6-11 Kevin Durant, 6-10 Nikola Vucevic, and Jokic, the two-time MVP, have been blocked less frequently on a percentage basis than Brunson.
He led all NBA guards with 276 points in the paint. During the regular season, he had the second highest number of and-1 plays in the NBA, trailing only Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is sometimes compared to Shaquille O’Neal.
“When you look at the rearview mirror and it says, ‘Objects are closer than they appear,’ that’s the kind of strength he has and the way he plays,” Warriors player Draymond Green, a past Defensive Player of the Year, told ESPN. “You may look at him and say, ‘Ah, he’s only 6-2 or whatever height he is.’ But he plays much bigger than that. He’s unique, but that’s not shocking.
DiVincenzo stated, “Playing against size doesn’t worry him. In college, there was no defensive three-second rule, so bigger players could simply stand there and jam the paint. To be able to do it today, he has more room to work against defences.
Giving Brunson more of anything, whether it’s space or a screen he’ll almost certainly reject, is usually a winning offer at this point. He has developed a number of practically unstoppable old-school advantages for himself.
“I’ve found ways to be comfortable while being uncomfortable,” she remarked. “My game is a little unconventional and different from most people’s. But I try to find methods to keep the defence off balance while staying on balance myself.”
