CLEVELAND \u2014 Much of the focus of Jalen Brunson\u2019s early training, courtesy of his father, Rick, was developing a mental edge. And a big part of that was tapping into Jalen\u2019s very fierce competitive spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So if a rival high school player was earning national acclaim, Rick would tell Jalen, \u2018He\u2019s better than you. He works harder.\u2019<\/p>\n
Jalen, as Knicks fans understand well, doesn\u2019t like to lose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made me want to outwork them,\u201d the point guard told The Post before this season. \u201cThey had all the God-given talent with how athletic they were and the stuff they can do that were eye-openers. And me, my God-given talent was to just outwork people. And it showed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 Much of the focus of Jalen Brunson\u2019s early training, courtesy of his father, Rick, was developing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[13054,36783,355,13331,258292,361,99,362,358],"class_list":["post-660155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-donovan-mitchell","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-nba","tag-nba-playoffs","tag-nba-playoffs-2026","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-sports-plus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}