David vs. The Goliaths: How Jalen Brunson Has Exceeded Expectations in the Modern NBA

In a league where size and skill dominate, Jalen Brunson has separated himself as the exception to this. How has he been so successful?

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In July 2022, Jalen Brunson signed a four-year $104 million deal with the New York Knicks. Brunson had just come off his best season in the NBA and helped lead the Dallas Mavericks to their first conference championship appearance in 11 years. When he signed his new contract, the impression was that New York had just overpaid for another sub-all-star caliber player instead of making a trade for an "all-world" talent like Donovan Mitchell. Brunson stands at just 6'2", lacks above-the-rim athleticism, and had not proven to be a consistent number-one option. In a league where size and skill were finally intersecting, how would an undersized guard like Brunson turn the Knicks' fortune around? Well, in his second season in New York, Brunson has already shattered expectations and is another example of how skill and drive can carry a player of any size to a successful career in the NBA.

I wrote about how positional skill sets have become more important in today's NBA than strictly positional size. Players such as Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid are listed are their team's centers, but they function as the primary ball handlers, passers, shot creators, rebounders, etc. Now more than ever in the history of basketball, a player's skill is more important than what position he plays or his listed height. For Jalen Brunson, this means that although he won't be anchoring a top-tier defense, he can diversify his on-ball skills to make up for his lack of height. By becoming a better shooter and ball handler, Brunson has thrived in today's NBA, even when surrounded by Goliaths like Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Brunson does not "size up" in terms of what position he plays, but his physical traits allow him to play bigger than he is. For example, he uses his body well on post-ups and has several counters in terms of footwork and shot fakes to elude defenders into clean looks or bait them into fouls. Coming off ball screens, he owns his pace and navigates through crowds by putting defenders in jail and stopping and going, waiting patiently for a window to open up. Once it does, he explodes through the hole like a running back, plays off two feet, and gets up a shot or sets up a teammate.

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Bruson's craftiness and control when he has the ball prevent him from being overwhelmed by the size on the floor. He also has become a much-improved pull-up three-point shooter (38.9%), allowing windows like the one above to be more open for him to exploit. Defenses must respect his shot from deep but at the cost of allowing him to get into his beloved midrange game.

Speaking of his midrange jumper, Brunson ranks in the 70th percentile in midrange efficiency while taking the 12th most shots from this distance. Again, his patience in the pick-and-roll and his use of his pivot allow him to create the space that gets eaten up by his lack of quickness. And while it is strange to see a 6'2" guard practically bully his way into these shots, Jalen shows that he knows his game and strengths (literally) and can manufacture clean looks from the most undesirable 15 feet in basketball. He is a powerful 6'2" guard and he understands defenders' momentum and angles to knock them off balance before he rises up for two.

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When you watch Brunson play, his style has an "old head" feel to it. Jump stop, reverse pivot, shot fake, duck under, banker off glass plus the foul. When compared to how other superstars play, the Knicks' All-Star relies on pace and fundamentals more than someone like Anthony Edwards who can just explode off one leg and posterize a bystanding defender (very reductionist description of Ant's play but you get the point). And neither way is better or worse. The point here is that once a player makes it to the NBA, there is a look-in-the-mirror moment. Everyone in the league was the guy at some point and it's up to the individual to identify how they can stick. For Brunson, this meant not trying to become something he wasn't, but instead investing more into the skills he already had while incorporating the needs of the modern three-point era into his offense.

This brings us full circle to answer the question at the beginning of this piece: "How would an undersized guard like Brunson turn the Knicks' fortune around?". The modern NBA is built for midrange specialists like Brunson because of all the real estate generated to operate within. His in-between game blends perfectly with the spaced-out court, but probably more important to Jalen and the Knicks' success has been his ability to accommodate the NBA's rapid interest (to say the least) in three-point shooting without getting lost in the shuffle.

There is a beautiful equilibrium in Jalen Brunson's play. He stands out as one of the best midrange shot-creators in the league, but he has also worked his way into becoming a legit threat from deep. He doesn't over-rely on tough pull-up jumpers, but he also doesn't favor launching it from 28 feet. Jalen gives the Knicks a bona fide star who can create for himself or his teammates from anywhere on the floor, something they haven't had in a long time. Additionally, not to sound cliché, but he has the heart of a champion.

Coming out of Villanova as the 33rd overall pick in 2018, Brunson could've just submitted to playing as All-NBA Luka Dončić's backup. After slogging away on the bench for his first three seasons, however, Brunson finally got his opportunity in the 2021-22 season. When Dončić missed the first three games of the 2022 playoffs due to a calf injury, it was Brunson who stepped up, like he had been all season, to lead the Mavericks to a 2-1 series lead over the Utah Jazz. The work and preparation behind the scenes were explosively expressed when Brunson erupted for 41 points in a must-win Game 2. This moment was an announcement that Jalen Brunson had arrived. For the rest of that postseason, he averaged 21 points on 46/34/80 shooting splits as Luka's running mate to the West Finals.

The first four years of Jalen's career served as an exposition of the type of player he is. Whenever the circumstances were not conducive to success, he just continued to trust the work and stay ready. Whenever doubt crept in or was verbally expressed by others, he just continued to trust the work and stay ready. He controlled what he could, and let the results take care of themselves. For Brunson and the Knicks, it's been a marriage of two similar ideologies differing only in presentation. While the bustling city of the Big Apple is home for Jalen now, he was a player forgotten in a deep draft class that just so happened to seize the opportunity he was given. Ironically, the star the Knicks were seeking just so happened to be the one player that had been doubted as being a game-changer. New York has its star, and Jalen Brunson is a gleaming example of moving to a big city to make your dreams come true. He makes the Knicks contenders because he will remain persistent in his unwavering belief that he can do it. That's what makes a champion, and Jalen Brunson has all the tools necessary to add to the legacy that is New York basketball.