New York City is a little bit different when the Knicks are playing deep into the playoffs.
Rowdy crowds of fans fill the street outside Madison Square Garden, even during road games. Chants of “Lets go Knicks” build to a crescendo — at Yankee Stadium. And this year, West 11th Street has a name familiar to fans of the team’s starting point guard: Jalen Brunson Boulevard.
Last week, after the Knicks shocked and defeated the champion Boston Celtics in the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference semifinals, the city honored Brunson and his teammates by temporarily renaming some streets after them.
Brunson’s No. 11 jerseys dot the sidewalks and bars from the Bronx to Coney Island and well beyond. There was even a Brunson look-alike contest on the steps of the Eighth Avenue post office on Monday.
“He means everything to the city right now,” said Joe Tuman, 38, a sanitation worker from Long Island, who wore a Knicks jersey outside Madison Square Garden on Thursday. This was six hours before the Knicks, facing elimination from the playoffs, beat the Indiana Pacers behind 32 points from Brunson.
“If he ran for mayor,” Tuman concluded, “I’d vote for him.”
New York has always had an abundant supply of magnetic star athletes who approach royalty in the city — from as far back as Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson to more recent stars like Carmelo Anthony, Sabrina Ionescu and Aaron Judge, the Yankees colossal outfielder, who enthralls roughly half the city.
But while baseball, football and hockey divide their big-league fan bases around New York, the Knicks own a unique position in the crowded landscape.
The Brooklyn Nets, after all, are still relative newcomers. The team can’t claim the same mass devotion and historical relevance that the Knicks enjoy in their hometown — where people have already adopted Brunson as their latest hero.
“Aaron Judge is beloved, and others too,” said Patrick Ambrose, who was Brunson’s high school coach in suburban Chicago. “But in terms of the urban, city sport, Jalen is the king of New York.”
After a couple of decades of mostly dismal basketball, the Knicks are drawing an entire metropolitan area back into their orbit — and out onto the streets — with Brunson at the helm. The courtside celebrities at Madison Square Garden also seem to recognize who the real star of the show is, with Timothée Chalamet appearing awed by the players’ presence and the forever superfan Spike Lee showing off a somewhat baffling bespoke outfit out of several Brunson jerseys. Brunson is easily the city’s most popular point guard since Frazier, who is also just known as Clyde. He won two championships with the Knicks in the 1970s. The team has not won the title since.
Fifty years later, Brunson is an updated version, and fans have caught on. Last year, his jersey was the 15th most popular among fans everywhere, driven primarily by sales in New York. This year, it is fifth. He was also voted the most clutch player in the N.B.A. this season.
Fans also see a player with the rare combination of skill, temperament and, above all, the ability to meet the occasion. Derek Jeter, the Yankees Hall of Famer, was once that way, too. Blessed with fantastic timing in the biggest games, he was a prince of New York, enchanting the city with his dashing looks, celebrity girlfriends and fancy townhouses.
Brunson is a different cat. He married his high-school sweetheart. They live in the Westchester suburbs with their baby girl.
“People are just drawn to him,” said Connor Cashaw, a high school teammate and close friend of Brunson’s, who has visited him in New York many times and seen the adulation up close. “It makes sense. He’s just a normal guy people can relate to who is doing great things.”
Great is no exaggeration. A good player while with the Dallas Mavericks from 2018 to 2022, Brunson has risen to the challenge of playing in New York, pushing the Knicks past the second round of the playoffs for the first time in 25 years.
“We don’t look at it as an accomplishment,” he said in his typically understated manner after the Knicks defeated the Celtics. “We’re grateful, but we know there’s a long way to go.”
If they can beat the Pacers in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals — Indiana leads, three games to two — the Knicks will reach the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 1999. Brunson, now 28, was a toddler that year, when his father, Rick Brunson, now a Knicks assistant, played for the team.
Jalen was not exceptionally tall as a child and did not produce the kind of dunking highlights that would grab the attention of fawning college coaches. But those who watched him play, even when he was in middle school — they knew.
In the summer after his eighth-grade year, Brunson was already practicing with the varsity basketball team at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Ill. One day Ambrose, the coach, walked over to Brunson during a break in a scrimmage and tossed him keys to his car. Brunson, not nearly old enough to drive, was confused.
Ambrose was trying to make a point. Brunson was going to be driving that team for the next four years.
“I was no genius,” Ambrose said in an interview from Illinois. “It was easy to recognize. It’s easy to see that Picasso was good, too.”
Brunson led his high school to the state finals twice, winning the title his senior year. From there he went to Villanova University, where the Wildcats won the N.C.A.A. tournament his freshman year. Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges, Brunson’s Knicks teammates, also played with him at Villanova. Two years later, Villanova and Brunson won it again.
Now Brunson and Hart have an amusing and revealing podcast called the Roommates Show, which has also endeared them to Knicks fans. Another thing the fans loved was when Brunson signed his contract extension last summer. He agreed to a four-year, $156.5 million deal — $113 million less than he could signed for a year later, providing more space for the Knicks to add other star players.
The result has worked out very well so far. The Knicks are still alive. Long live their king.
David Waldstein is a Times reporter who writes about the New York region, with an emphasis on sports.
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