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By Jayesh Pagar
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Jalen Brunson carried the Knicks to a title last June with a bad left wrist. Most fans didn’t know how bad it was until the season ended.
The Knicks captain had surgery on July 7 to fix a tendon that kept snapping over the bone every time he shot. He was cleared in late September, right before training camp.
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A week and a half into the title defense, his jumper still has not looked like itself. Fans have noticed, and one question was always going to come up.
SNY Knicks shared a clip on X of Brunson talking to the media. A reporter pointed out that, before the season, Brunson had said the surgery limited how many shots he got up this summer, and asked how much that was affecting him now.
“Not at all,” Brunson said.
He didn’t dress it up. Brunson played through this same wrist injury for the entire title run and never once blamed it. That has not changed.
His shooting says otherwise, at least so far. Through six games, he was shooting 39.5 percent from the field and 32.5 percent from 3, both the worst marks of his career.
He did flash the old Brunson on Oct. 28 in Chicago. He poured in a season-high 38 points against the Bulls, shooting 52 percent from the floor and 60 percent from deep.
After that game, he admitted the slump had gotten into his head. Seeing shots fall, he said, helped him clear out the extra noise.
One big night hasn’t fixed everything, though. The Knicks are 3-4 and rank 22nd in offense, and Brunson’s touch has come and gone. In clutch time, he has hit just 5 of his 13 shots.
He could point to the surgery, and nobody would blame him. He won’t. If the Chicago game was the start of something, Knicks fans will happily take him at his word.
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