These Knicks were built in Jalen Brunson’s image

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NEW YORK — Jalen Brunson’s trophy room is not robust. Somewhere, hanging around the home, is the game ball from his career-best 60-point performance last season. His parents collect the rest of his awards.

Brunson’s Clutch Player of the Year trophy — an elegant, glass prize that looks like a vase with a gold jump shooter floating in the middle — arrived from the NBA weeks ago with an error: His name wasn’t engraved in it. The New York Knicks had to send the award back to fix the mistake. Brunson has since received the corrected version of it, with “Jalen Brunson” properly etched onto the keepsake.

Of course, it’s unclear if Brunson will keep it. Even in its infancy, it’s already laying around, not displayed prominently at the Brunson household.

It is Brunson’s brand not to care about the awards. And yet, the two-time All-Star can identify one piece of prime memorabilia hanging on the wall at his parents’ place, an item that never actually belonged to him.

“Whenever I’m at the house I see the finals jersey hanging up on the wall,” Brunson said. “And it’s pretty cool to see.”

The proprietor of that jersey is Brunson’s father, Rick, a player for the Knicks the last time the team made the NBA Finals, an eventual loss to the San Antonio Spurs in 1999. Now, Jalen has the same organization four wins short of the playoffs’ last round. And once again, the same team stands in the way.

When the Knicks take the court Wednesday night against the Indiana Pacers, they will play their first conference finals game since 2000. That time, the Pacers beat them in six games. The season before, the year of Brunson’s finals jersey, remains a chapter out of Knicks lore: A six-game victory over Indiana that included the famed Larry Johnson four-point play to become the first No. 8 seed to make the Finals.

Today, Brunson is a series away from returning the Knicks, one of the league’s least successful franchises over the better part of two decades, to the big stage. This — not the Clutch Player of the Year or the fifth-place MVP finish in 2024 or the 40- or 50- or 60-point games — was the plan all along.

Brunson signed a three-year extension last summer not for the money. The new contract does not kick in until 2025-26, but had Brunson waited until the upcoming summer to re-sign after the expiration of his current deal, he could have received max money in free agency. Instead, he took a cheaper extension, which locked in long-term security for both sides.

The All-Star point guard could guarantee direct deposits for three seasons beyond this one, protecting against any extreme (though unlikely) circumstances that could have hurt his open-market value. Meanwhile, the Knicks hold onto the greatest free-agent signing in franchise history, the man who came over from the Dallas Mavericks in 2022 — and they do it on a team-friendly number.

Effects of the new collective bargaining agreement are already rippling across the NBA. The Denver Nuggets have struggled to build around their core because of second-apron fears. The Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns are too expensive to improve substantially, and are facing the prospect of potentially dealing off stars. The Boston Celtics, because of one injury to Jayson Tatum, have to rethink their entire future, just because of the severe restrictions on expensive teams nowadays.

The Knicks don’t have to worry about that, at least not for a couple of years.

Brunson pointed to reasons other than money after signing the deal. He had studied the CBA and understood its ramifications. New York’s best chance to win not just for a year or two but to extend a championship window would come if its top-tier contributors could provide financial relief. So he did that.

He received the title of team captain upon his re-commitment, an intuitive decision. The Knicks go as Brunson does. Somehow, each New York squad ends up absorbing bits and pieces of his personality.

In years past, the locker room has soaked up his attention to detail, his dedication to marginal value.

“He’s a great student of the game,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said.

The Pacers, who beat an injured Knicks squad in the second round last season, won’t be an easy matchup. Indiana guard Andrew Nembhard is a physical, crafty defender used to manning tough assignments every night. Wing Aaron Nesmith is strong in the chest, long and battled Brunson after the Pacers started using him more on the point guard in Game 3 of last spring’s series.

Indiana doesn’t concede the 3-point arc. It plays with pace. Center Myles Turner is a chore in the paint.

Then again, Brunson rejoices in chores.

He lives in tight spaces, able to slither out of them with a pivot or a hesitation. He can barely dunk and isn’t an end-to-end sprinter but stops as fast as anyone else in the league, planting on a foot and changing directions as inertia carries defenders in other directions.

When the Knicks need a bucket, Brunson tends to walk into it.

Over the past month, this version of the Knicks has reclassified itself. A group that was inconsistent throughout the regular season now defines itself with an in-your-face mental fortitude, the same one that drips from Brunson.

During a hard-fought, first-round series against the Detroit Pistons, a six-gamer that felt like it went seven, the Knicks fought back from fourth-quarter deficits in all four of their wins. Come the final stretch, they rely on Brunson, who averaged a league-leading 41.5 points per 36 minutes during close-and-late situations (defined as games within five points with five-or-less minutes to go) in the regular season and has somehow upped that average to 46.1 in the playoffs.

“It’s great we have someone who has a calming demeanor like that, especially in those moments you’re talking about,” Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said. “J.B. was the Clutch Player of the Year for a reason.”

But that’s not the trophy Brunson cares about most.

He drained the first-round, series-winner over defensive menace Ausar Thompson against Detroit, crossing Thompson into Flint, Mich., before strolling into a 3-pointer. The Knicks throttled back from down 20 points during each of Games 1 and 2 against Boston. In Game 4, they overcame a 14-point, second-half deficit. Brunson caught fire that night, matching heroic shot for heroic shot with Tatum. But those Boston comebacks and the 38-point shellacking to end the Celtics’ season weren’t only because of Brunson’s late-game valiance.

Mikal Bridges has taken over crunch time. OG Anunoby has locked in defensively. Josh Hart has made games ugly, just how he likes it, hustling after every loose ball in existence. Mitchell Robinson is back to full health with an exclamation point. Miles “Deuce” McBride is a point-of-attack defender and shooter.

The Pacers are exhausting, owners of a top-10 defense since early December. They never stop moving, don’t turn the ball over, cut until they’ve fully scrambled a defense, boast depth down the bench and just wrecked the Bucks and Cleveland Cavaliers to race to the conference finals. But as Celtics lead executive Brad Stevens said in his end-of-season news conference this week, the Knicks are “peaking,” too.

They have a chance to make a physical win over Detroit and a persistent one over Boston matter even more.  And if they do, maybe Brunson can keep a jersey for his wall.

(Photo illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)

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