Steve Popper: NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson put the Knicks on his shoulders and delivered

It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment Saturday night when Jalen Brunson realized he was going to have to do more, to score more, with the Knicks struggling on offense.

At what moment did he decide he was going to have to put his teammates on his shoulders and carry them across a finish line that no other star, no other captain, had been able to accomplish for 53 years?

But to pinpoint the moment when he changed the trajectory of the franchise? That’s easy.

As soon as he walked in the door.

He’d been in the locker room as a small child when his father, Rick, was a part of the last Knicks team to reach the NBA Finals in 1999. As Jalen grew and his basketball career matured, he saw the rubble that was left at Madison Square Garden. The losses, the dysfunction, already had started to turn, but when he arrived four years ago, there was a change.

Mitchell Robinson, the longest-tenured Knicks player and someone who had been here through the worst of times, saw it when he arrived.

“His mindset, his work ethic, his energy that he just brings,” Robinson said. “You know, he just brings joy, and you know, we need that. You know, when stuff get rough, we have a little sit-down, talk, and he gets us back on track, like a leader, like a captain.

“To have him around especially for the last four or five years, it’s been truly amazing. I mean, there’s really no words I can really put here, but he’s just, you know, he just does his thing.”

What Brunson does on the court is easy to see, and it has far exceeded what some of the doubters and critics anticipated he could accomplish. He averaged 32.6 points per game in the NBA Finals as the Knicks eliminated the Spurs in five games, and in the finale on Saturday night, he scored 45 of the team’s 94 points. It was the highest percentage of a team’s points in a clinching victory by anyone other than Michael Jordan.

But it was more than the numbers. The franchise was haunted, not just by the ghosts of the jerseys that hung in the rafters and teams that could not measure up but by the decades of dysfunction. And it was not just the losses, the failed draft picks and the misguided trades, but the embarrassment of giving the city a team that was hard to root for.

That changed when Brunson arrived. He had help, with the front office building a team of complementary pieces around him. But there was more, as the captain implored the team to follow his lead.

Brunson became an All-Star and All-NBA player and then opted to take a contract that saved the Knicks $113 million, giving them the flexibility to continue building. He became the captain that summer, too, the clear centerpiece of a team in the glare of the Madison Square Garden spotlight.

“No pressure. No pressure whatsoever,” Brunson said. “I’ve described pressure in the past. My dad being on eight or nine unguaranteed contracts throughout his career and not knowing when you’re going to get cut, when a team is going to move on from you, while your family is on the East Coast and you are wherever you are in the country.

“That’s pressure. Working out three times a day in the summertime and watching him push himself just to get a training camp deal, that’s pressure.

“I’m very fortunate to be in the position I am, and I definitely think I worked pretty hard, and so when the opportunity presented itself like it did today, I just trust my work. And if we win, we win. If we don’t, we learn, we move forward. But I’m just never afraid to fail.”

Part of the change was that failure became seasons like 2024-25, when the Knicks were eliminated in the Eastern Conference Finals but set the stage to earn their first championship since 1973 the following season.

And that is part of the change, what became acceptable, what became expected. It became family. His father is an assistant coach with the team and his good friends from Villanova University — Josh Hart, Donte DiVincenzo and finally Mikal Bridges — have been a part of it at various times. It’s family, but with tough love.

“I see a man that’s grown up and took the challenge of being in the biggest market in the world, being with a team that hasn’t made it to the NBA Finals in 27 years and hasn’t won in [53] years, and knowing that he could do it,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “Shout-out to everybody who told him he couldn’t do it, because it gave him fuel for the fire.”

Brunson never revealed it, always saying and doing the right thing. As he walked into the interview room and made his way onto the stage late Saturday night, carrying both the Larry O’Brien Trophy and the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy, he joked, “Do I be myself or do I talk my [expletive]?”

There was little doubt that once he sat at the table with the trophies, he would say the right thing, do the right thing. While he may have joked about it, he would take the same high road he’d navigated his entire career.

By Steve Popper

steve.popper@newsday.com@StevePopper

Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.