Jalen Brunson’s answer was one word: “No.”
The question?
Did Brunson, one of the last men standing on a depleted Knicks team eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 on Sunday, consider this season a success?
“Did we win the championship?” Brunson later said. “Did we get close? So, no. That’s my mindset. That’s just how it is.”
It’s an admirable stance to take, that these Knicks, with an injury list that could compete for a playoff spot on its own, still believed they came up short.
And it’s why this season is everything Brunson said it was not.
The Knicks did more than get on base this season. Even in defeat, they hit a walk-off home run.
As a reminder, the Knicks lost Julius Randle for the rest of the season to a dislocated right shoulder on Jan. 27. They traded RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley for OG Anunoby, who, too, left the rotation on Jan. 27 due to elbow inflammation ultimately requiring a small surgery. The Knicks lost their starting center Mitchell Robinson on Dec. 8 for more than three months, then lost him again for the season in Game 1 of the Pacers series. They lost Bojan Bogdanovic to a freak ankle injury in the first round against the Philadelphia 76ers, too.
And they lost Anunoby, again, in Game 2, after his breakout 28-points-in-28-minutes performance, an injury the team never quite recovered from and lost four of the ensuing five games to close the chapter on this season.
Yet despite missing Randle and Bogdanovic in Round 1, the Knicks sent Joel Embiid and the 76ers home in six.
And despite losing Anunoby and Robinson in Round 2 — and with both Brunson and Josh Hart sustaining injuries over the course of the second-round series — it still took a miraculous shot from Pacers’ guard Andrew Nembhard in Game 3 for the Pacers to keep the series alive.
Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle, for example, refused to believe Anunoby’s injury absence meant it was time to write-off the Knicks in this series.
It took the Pacers learning the very toughness it takes to win an NBA series by copying the blueprint a battered Knicks team put to use. It took seven games for a 10-man Pacers rotation to put to bed a Knicks team whittled down to just five players who played normal rotation minutes at the end of the regular season.
“The thing is none of it gets easier. It just doesn’t get easier,” he said ahead of Game 3. “The Knicks thrive on these kind of challenges. You’ve got to give them a lot of credit for the things they’ve overcome this year. And our guys are learning that the level of toughness you need to win at this stage of the playoffs is very high.”
So what is success?
Let’s use Brunson individually as an example.
Brunson’s ascent to stardom this season has been well-documented.
First-time All-Star? Check.
All-NBA honors? You can bet it.
Most points by a player in a playoff game in franchise history? You know who owns that record, too.
Brunson averaged a career-best 28.7 points per game this season and powered his team to the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed despite losing his co-star for the season.
But he didn’t win MVP.
He didn’t place top-three in MVP votes, either.
He also wasn’t named to Team USA for the 2024 Paris Olympics, nor did his Knicks advance to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Does that mean Brunson’s individual season was not a success?
Brunson had the best season of any Knicks player quite possibly since Patrick Ewing suited in orange and blue more than two decades ago. Yes, a better season than Carmelo Anthony, who coincidentally also averaged 28.7 points to lead the Knicks to a 54-win season and a second-round playoff loss to none other than the Indiana Pacers in 2013.
Brunson did it at 6-foot-2 and while missing his entire starting front court for most of the second half of the season.
“I would say there’s pros and cons to how I played,” he said after Game 7. “The pros, obviously, are I played well individually at some points in the playoffs. The cons are that I didn’t play well enough to help my team move forward. You can say I got hurt in Game 7, I wasn’t playing well in Game 7. We had a 2-0 and a 3-2 lead, it’s just hard to look at things individually when you don’t help your team.”
Another admirable stance from an admirable player, whose humility has him downplaying the strides both he and his organization have taken.
Hart, of course, has a different viewpoint — or maybe the same perspective with a drastically different filter.
In Year 1 of Brunson’s Knicks tenure, the Knicks finished with the East’s No. 5 seed, upset the No. 4 Cleveland Cavaliers in Round 1, then succumbed to the Miami Heat, who advanced to the NBA Finals, in the second round.
In Year 2, Brunson pioneered a remarkable season. The Knicks secured the East’s No. 2 seed despite a rash of injuries, then advanced to the second round, again, before the injuries became too much to overcome.
What does this mean for Years 3 and beyond?
“I think it’s very bright. I think there’s hope for what we’re building, and I think that’s the biggest thing,” Hart said after elimination on Sunday. “Obviously the offseason is a business. There are decisions that’s gonna be made. There’s guys gonna be going in and out, whatever it is, but I think we built a foundation of a franchise that’s gonna be fighting. A franchise that’s moving in the right direction. Obviously like I said it’s tough to end it this way, but we’re going in the right direction. I think we’re giving this city and Knick fans something to hope for.”
The Knicks gave their fans a reason to believe, and they pushed the bounds of what is possible, clawing to save what many believed was a season lost to irreparable injury.
And what does Brunson think of the trajectory this team is on, having established its position among contenders with a season only injuries could derail at the end?
“I think we’re making positive strides,” he said. “We just need to make more.”
Never too high. Never too low. An undeniably successful season in the books for Brunson and the Knicks, with an active offseason on the horizon for a team, already aiming to take the next step.
