Jalen Brunson is smiling for a number of reasons, but at this moment, the smile is for one reason in particular.
He is sitting at the podium in Madison Square Garden’s press conference room moments after a rare celebration of an NBA player being named official captain of a franchise, in this case the Knicks, one of the most storied franchises in all of sports.
Brunson is here in large part due to his play. With Julius Randle injured, the first-time All-Star and All-NBA guard led the Knicks to 50 wins, the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed, and a second-round playoff appearance, one game shy of the conference finals.
He is also here because of his pay: Brunson signed a four-year, $156.5 million contract extension in July. He could have waited until next summer to sign a five-year, $269 million contract as an unrestricted free agent but instead left $113 million on the table to help the Knicks avoid the restrictive second apron and maintain cap flexibility to compete for championships long-term.
Brunson always knew he wanted to stay in New York. He swiftly signed the extension the day the Knicks were able to offer it as opposed to the riskier approach of holding out for a supermax payday next summer.
“If we’re gonna talk in black-and-white, that was the most money I could get this year,” Brunson said. “Anything can happen in a year, and then obviously, next year is next year’s deal. I secured myself for the future and we’ll move on from there.”
Moments later, Brunson smiled.
He has already counted the dollars his future paychecks can cash if he continues to lift the Knicks heights the franchise hasn’t seen since its last NBA Finals appearance in 1999.
“I looked at it, and me and my close circle, we talked about it, and I’ll keep it at that,” he said with a grin.
Brunson is entering the final season of the four-year, $104 million deal he signed to leave the Dallas Mavericks for the Knicks in 2022. He declined the fourth-year player option to sign the new extension that will take him through the 2028-29 season, though he has a player option on the final year of his deal that will allow him to test free agency in the summer of 2028.
If the salary cap increases the projected maximum of 10% every season courtesy of the NBA’s new $74.6 billion media right’s deal, it will land at $206.4 million.
And if Brunson continues to scorch opposing defenses over the life of his new extension, he will be in line to sign the 10-year veteran super max — a five-year contract worth 35% of the salary cap, or a deal starting at $72 million in Year 1 with 8% annual raises: a grand total of $418.2 million.
Brunson is well aware of the looming salary cap spike and how it will impact the salaries star players can garner. The money, of course, is not his focus.
For Brunson, “winning trumps everything,” and if things shake their way, the Knicks, armed with possibly their deepest roster in franchise history, could be in position to compete for the franchise’s first NBA title since 1973.
“It’s nice to hear that we’re contenders, but I think we’ve gotta go to training camp without having that word be spoken of,” Brunson said. “From Day 1, let’s just get better every single day and focus on the next day. Obviously I’ve said I want to get past second-round exits two straight years, but you can’t just stop the season and jump right back into the season. You’ve got to start all over again.
“And so, we’ve got some new pieces. We’ve got some familiar faces. What can we do with it? What kind of team do we want to be? So we’ve got to lock in and buy-in together.”
The Knicks, of course, won’t put the championship cart before the horse, just like Brunson only spent moments counting his future dollars.
If he brings a title to New York, the bigger dollars will inevitably follow.
