{"id":712649,"date":"2026-06-03T17:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/712649\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T17:00:10","slug":"jalen-brunson-was-there-the-last-time-the-new-york-knicks-were-in-the-nba-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/712649\/","title":{"rendered":"Jalen Brunson was there the last time the New York Knicks were in the NBA Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jalen Brunson was there the last time the New York Knicks were in the NBA Finals<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jalen Brunson hasn’t played in the NBA Finals before.<\/p>\n

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He was there the last time the New York Knicks<\/a> were in the Finals, though — sort of.<\/p>\n

The Knicks last played in the NBA Finals in 1999.<\/p>\n

That roster included Rick Brunson, who is now a Knicks assistant coach but more notably is Jalen’s father.<\/p>\n

Jalen was 2 years old at the time, able to be a part of the festivities as a little guy a long way away from the NBA, according to the Wall Street Journal.<\/a><\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0NYC mayor gets rid of bedtime so everyone can watch NBA Finals<\/a><\/p>\n

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Rick was far from the player that Jalen is. In that 1998-99 season, he played just 5.6 minutes per game for the Knicks, and he appeared in nine postseason games with an average of just 2.0 minutes per outing.<\/p>\n

He became a coach early, teaching Jalen the game of basketball so that the undersized, not overly athletic point guard could become one of the best players on the planet.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Jalen plays more like a coach’s son than an NBA player’s son, although in this case, he is both.<\/p>\n

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He has impeccable footwork, a countermove for every defensive maneuver, and pretty much unlimited basketball IQ out on the court.<\/p>\n

Jalen also has a clutch gene unmatched by almost anyone in the modern NBA.<\/p>\n

The lefty star probably would’ve grown into the same player even if he wasn’t a 2-year old youngster hanging around the last time the Knicks were in the Finals. But it can’t have hurt, and it creates some full-circle moments here for the Brunson family.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0One player will get a ring regardless of whether Spurs or Knicks win NBA Finals<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jalen Brunson was there the last time the New York Knicks were in the NBA Finals originally appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,19284,459,2087,2901,253481,82],"class_list":["post-712649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-rick-brunson","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}