More Than You Bargained For, Yeah

It’s endemic of having grown up around a team that had to fight for every positive the national light chose to shine, but when someone hits a weird enough record such that it matches Ben Gordon, I start to wonder. Rides in other people’s cars gave me sufficient exposure to the Ben Gordon Experience, before, during and after the period in which he was a Charlotte Bobcat. I liked watching him.

To see a player match something he did – we’re talking about Jalen Brunson going 9-for-9 from three, in on his way to scoring 50 points in leading the New York Knicks to a win over the Phoenix Suns last Friday night – brought a smile to my face, something that is fleeting in this year, as we turn to the next.

I’m far from the first to say this, but Jalen Brunson is the best thing to happen to the Knicks since – trying not to speak out of turn, but also assuredly sure of this – Patrick Ewing. Sure, Melo’s reign was underrated. We knew the Knicks didn’t have a chance then. Melo deserved better; who knows if he would’ve accepted its circumstances.

Brunson’s 9-for-9 night is the Ben Gordon match, along with former Knick Latrell Sprewell. Neither of them had the directional juice (?) to make their teams better. This team is good.

Are they good enough? Who cares? Are you good enough? What is enough, and when do you feel satisfied? Do you need kids? Do you want more of (anything)? Enough, enough, enough. Not to be Dave Matthews about this, but when do you think about anything being too much? He’s pretty good at his job, but I know not everybody subscribes to this.

With regard to the Knicks, though: it does electrify me when they’re good. The theatre lighting + solid stylistic play thanks to Thibs + blue and orange are complementary colors = Knicks basketball is good when it’s good. A nationally televised game made it easy to remind people that the Knicks aren’t the joke they make themselves out to be.

…it ends up being impressive that anyone on the Knicks put up 50 against Kevin Durant, a noted person who does not like the idea of the New York Knickerbockers franchise. If he was about that life, he would’ve joined up four summers ago. Instead, he joined an unserious team, full of itself in ways that have nothing to do with its own history.

As it is, and given how annoying New York fans can be about anything they’re all the way in on, Durant should’ve decimated the Knicks out of whimsy. Other than Michael Jordan (retired), Kobe Bryant (RIP), Bill Russell (also RIP) and Kareem (hip), there is no better be-all, end-all player in NBA history than KD. When he wants to, he does.

At any time, from anywhere, Kevin Durant can score. He’s staring down Tony Allen, or Marc Gasol, or Tim Duncan, or Kawhi Leonard, or Draymond Green: it doesn’t matter. Basketball people call him the purest scorer in history for a reason. His defensive efficacy had him in conversations over what a Defensive Player Of The Year was supposed to do; in any case, I don’t think he’s supposed to get himself suspended.

To watch Brunson do that, then, is to accept a certain reality not adjacent to anything relative. The Suns were going to win that game from early in the third quarter onward. The Knicks are the Knicks. That was over.

Until, well: Jalen Brunson decided he was going to be That Guy, yet again. Fortunately, Julius Randle, having a good game himself but not a Takeover, Move Out Of The Way Fellas game, recognized what was what, and he promptly fed the man at hand with some assists.

To his credit, Randle re-directed traffic better than anybody this side of your friend’s friend, embellishing the jukebox and promising you “fresh water,” whatever that means, when you get back. This is not a person you regularly interact with, nor one you typically invite to karaoke. I don’t know what this says about me or the person I aspire to be, but I would invite Julius Randle to karaoke. Knowing he has ties to Myrtle Beach, I welcome it.

Jalen Brunson is also welcome. Him taking down the Suns, or him taking down the Lakers, or him taking down his own teammates on his way to The Big W: joyous. Taking it directly to Durant was a masterstroke in politicking after the fact. You should’ve been there, or here, expressed via Brunson’s play.

Long a team in need of a point guard, the Knicks acquired Brunson in the summer of 2022. As breathless as it was, Brunson’s arrival was meat on the bone. Telegraphed though it was, the Villanova product’s signing with the Knicks felt like order. At least, finally, there would be organization.

Seizing the reigns of a team that made the playoffs in 2021, after unceremoniously losing to the Hawks in an increasingly infamous series, Brunson has all but made it a point that a team with a point guard his size (which, not coincidentally, is in the range of Trae Young – the man who undid New York in those playoffs). A sense of direction, it turns out, is nice to have.

Brunson’s Friday night started slowly before leaning all the way in – sometimes you’re at the party you didn’t ask for. Perpetually, I’m sure he feels like this. Knicks fans, though, do not.

The line between enjoying myself as a fan, generally, and appreciating what is happening regardless of affiliation is one FreeDarko didn’t specifically delineate. The more Brunson does well, the more I’m inclined to believe in him, and that’s something that may or may not pay off for anyone involved.

I am glad that Jalen Brunson is on the Knicks, and I am beyond psyched that he went that hard, against Durant and God and Everybody Else, for the Knicks. A bit dramatic, sure, but as long as the Garden has theatre lighting, everybody’s under the lights. Brunson, fortunately, has responded. I’m glad he’s stuck. Ben Gordon should have been so lucky.