The unique brilliance of Jalen Brunson

In the immediate aftermath of winning a championship, there’s utter jubilation. Once that initial high wears off after the ceremony and you start truly grasping what you just witnessed, the human mind naturally goes in a completely different direction.

You begin to think of those who were proven wrong.

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Athletes always say after they win it all, “They didn’t believe in us,” or “What’re they gonna say now?” They feed off slander. Any time in life that you or something you care about gets disrespected, you long for the day that person has to eat crow and face the music. It’s just human nature.

For the basketball world, after the final buzzer sounded on June 13, that vitriol was directed towards one person.

Becky Hammon.

After a few months to really ponder things, my tone has shifted toward Becky, even if only slightly.

In that clip, Hammon expresses her opinion, which is based on the last 35 years of NBA basketball. Only one team has won a championship with a small guard as their best player since the Bad Boys Pistons from 1989-90, and even then there’s an exception because almost all of their identity came from smashmouth defense that had nothing to do with I.T.

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You can’t win if your best player is small. The one exception was Steph Curry, who changed the game of basketball forever with the 3-point revolution. Unless you have a generational talent, an outlier with impact so drastic that you have to provide additional context for his cultural impact, your best player cannot be a small guard if you want to win a championship.

She was right about her overall premise. She was just wrong about the one person she singled out.

There are loads of small guards that Becky could’ve singled out. Ja Morant, Donovan Mitchell, Damian Lillard, Kyrie Irving, prime Russell Westbrook, Trae Young, De’Aaron Fox, etc. All of these guys were No. 1 options at or before the time of her remarks in December 2023. She has never, on record, talked about any of them as guys who can’t win.

Her problem was that she singled out Jalen Brunson. The odds were in her favor that she would never have to answer for her misdeeds, but…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/unique-brilliance-jalen-brunson-163000538.html

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Publish date : 2026-09-22 16:30:00

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