New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson is introduced as he arrives on court before the start of an NBA basketball game against the Indiana Pacers, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, at Madison Square Garden in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
New York City is a different animal when the Knicks are good but during a franchise-altering 15-2 stretch, it has also been struck with crystal clarity.
Following a 40-point performance in which he helped will his Knicks back from a 15-point second-quarter deficit and a stretch in which they trailed for 42 straight minutes to defeat the Indiana Pacers 109-105, an emotional Jalen Brunson — on the heels of being selected to his first All-Star Game — was met with “MVP” chants from the Madison Square Garden faithful.
“I feel fantastic, I’m not going to lie to you,” Brunson said, shaking off a poked eye down the stretch of the gutsy win. “It was really cool. The whole experience, the whole night, how we won, what happened before the game. You work for certain moments but you don’t know how you’re going to react once it happens. It was special.”
Overreactions and hot takes are commonplace in sports in this day and age, but Knicks fans hit the nail squarely on the head Thursday night. Brunson needs to be in the NBA’s MVP conversation.
The 27-year-old point guard, now in his second season with the Knicks, has clawed his way up the ranks toward superstar status while hoisting an oft-dormant franchise — one that more often than not was the butt of NBA jokes during this millennium — with him.
The Knicks have been in dire need of a legitimate floor general for ages, something that was often seen as the most glaring of missing pieces that would ultimately provide stability for a franchise that had made the postseason just twice in the last 10 years and hadn’t been past the second round of the playoffs in 24.
But upon his acquisition via free agency after four seasons with the Dallas Mavericks, Brunson wasn’t…
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