{"id":68471,"date":"2025-12-12T05:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T05:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/68471\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T05:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T05:45:10","slug":"mike-brown-keeps-pushing-for-franchise-altering-jalen-brunsons-mvp-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/68471\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Brown keeps pushing for ‘franchise-altering’ Jalen Brunson’s MVP case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ask Jalen Brunson, and the Knicks\u2019 superstar will say he doesn\u2019t ever think about how he turned the franchise around. <\/p>\n

But ask Mike Brown, in his first season as Brunson\u2019s head coach, about whether his point guard already has done enough to be considered one of the franchise greats and there isn\u2019t any hesitation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been here long enough,\u201d Brown said Thursday after the Knicks practiced in Tarrytown ahead of their NBA Cup semifinal in Vegas on Saturday. \u201cHe\u2019s helped them win a lot of games. Obviously, he did start in Dallas, but he was a little younger. It wasn\u2019t his team. He wasn\u2019t really the guy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came here, it\u2019s his team, he\u2019s the guy here, he\u2019s an MVP candidate, like I said, and so what he\u2019s doing is definitely franchise-altering, and again, that has to be taken note [of]. Not just in the MVP race but also within the community of New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown has continued to vouch for Brunson getting league-wide recognition. <\/p>\n

After the Knicks defeated the Bucks on Nov. 28, Brown said there\u2019s \u201cnot enough chatter\u201d about Brunson being an MVP candidate. He added some additional criteria to his MVP thoughts Thursday, too, by saying that it should \u201cstart and end with\u201d the best players from the top three teams in each conference \u2014 which this year includes Cade Cunningham, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic and Brunson.<\/p>\n

\"NewJalen Brunson reacts after hitting a 3-pointer during the third quarter of the Knicks\u2019 blowout win over the Jazz on Dec. 5, 2025. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

In his fourth season with the Knicks, Brunson has continued to compile career milestones and etch his name into record books \u2014 making his first All-Star Game in 2023-24 and winning the NBA\u2019s Clutch Player of the Year award last season. <\/p>\n

He has averaged 28.3 points and 6.3 assists per game this year, including 35 points across 39 minutes in the NBA Cup quarterfinals Tuesday, and has the Knicks two wins away from an in-season tournament title.<\/p>\n

\"NewJalen Brunson drives on Isaiah Collier during the first quarter of the Knicks\u2019 blowout win over the Jazz on Dec. 5, 2025. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody\u2019s gotta score, somebody\u2019s gotta rebound, and usually if you\u2019re a team that\u2019s a play-in game team or you\u2019re out of the playoffs or the bottom echelon of the playoffs, you\u2019re not impacting it at the level that the guys that I just mentioned are,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd so for me, Jalen is just doing what he gets paid to do. He\u2019s an MVP candidate in this business, and he\u2019s just showing it again to everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday will mark the fourth time in 25 games that the Knicks and Magic have met, seemingly planting the seeds of a budding rivalry that could renew on the postseason stage. But despite how the first three games went \u2014 with Orlando winning two games and handing the Knicks their only home loss \u2014 Brown pushed back on the notion that this matchup has become a rivalry.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhat\u2019s happening on and off the Garden court\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Knicks by Stefan Bondy, a weekly exclusive on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Last year, the Pistons emerged as a budding rival of the Knicks because of their playoff series. The first three meetings between the Magic and the Knicks didn\u2019t have any stakes attached, but that\u2019ll change Saturday in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little tough just because I don\u2019t think \u2014 maybe at the beginning of the year, but neither team has been completely healthy when we played each other,\u201d Brown said. \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily feel like it\u2019s on the rivalry level yet. But it can be in due time, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ask Jalen Brunson, and the Knicks\u2019 superstar will say he doesn\u2019t ever think about how he turned the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4777,1556,21,9,11,1104,10,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-68471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-jalen-brunson","9":"tag-mike-brown","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-knicks","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}