Bargain Brunson

Today we celebrate a magical postseason run by New York's star point guard, who is apparently thinking about signing for a major discount.

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is all Brunson, all the time, but first, a quick couple of summer nuggets from our friend Ian Begley…

News & Notes

🏀 According to Ian, the Knicks don’t seem inclined to pursue Donovan Mitchell as aggressively as they did two years ago should he be made available by Cleveland this summer. On Isaiah Hartenstein, Begley also noted that “I would assume the Knicks and Hartenstein agree on a deal.” So that’s pretty nice to hear.

🏀 Picking up on some earlier reporting on this same topic from during the season (including by this same reporter), Steve Popper wrote yesterday that “indications” are that Jalen Brunson is willing to sign a 4-year, $156 million contract extension with the Knicks this summer, thus bypassing the possibility of signing a far more lucrative deal (five years, $270 million) in the summer of 2025.

I went through the financial and logistical specifics of this possibility when it was first reported on about a month, so feel free to refer back to that newsletter for those details. In short, he wouldn’t be leaving nearly as much money on the table as the disparity between the two contract totals makes it seem. A key point is that Brunson could re-enter free agency as a 10+ year vet if he makes the last year of this extension a player option and opts out in 2028. By then, salaries will be even more astronomical than they are now, and Jalen will be in the NBA’s highest earning bracket.

One would assume that’s all part of the calculation here, but there’s probably more to it. For one, he knows that getting max money next summer would significantly inhibit New York’s ability to build and maintain a championship roster around him. If Brunson is as concerned with winning as he claims, this would be the easiest way to help that come to fruition.

But Jalen also needs to look out for his own interests, and that’s the other part of this that needs to be considered.

It might seem completely absurd for a guy who just finished 5th in MVP voting to consider anything less than his max earning potential, especially considering there has been just one other top-five MVP finisher in the last seven years who didn’t sign a max deal following his appearance on the ballot. That player was Chris Paul, who was 36 years old when he signed his next contract (which not coincidentally gave him the highest career earnings total in NBA history at the time, even though it was below the max).

Before that, you have to go back to 2017 to find a player who was signed to something less than the max when he finished top-five in MVP, and who also signed for less than the max on his next contract after that.

Far, far less than the max, in fact.

It’s incredibly sad to think about now, but following his injury issues towards the end of his Celtics tenure, Isaiah Thomas barely earned over $5 million on all of his subsequent NBA contracts combined.

Before Brunson, Paul and Thomas were the shortest players from the last several years to finish among the league’s best five players according to the voting members of the media. Another small-ish guard that actually won the MVP, Steph Curry, once accepted perhaps the most bargain basement contract in NBA history because he was concerned about how his once troublesome ankles might impact his long term earning potential.

Point is, as a relatively small guard, Jalen Brunson may not feel he has the luxury of someone like Kevin Durant, who signed a max deal even though Brooklyn knew full well he’d be missing the entirety of the following season. At nearly seven-feet tall, KD got the benefit of the doubt that he’d heal up and be back to normal. If a similarly devastating injury befell Brunson, there’s no guarantee he’d be viewed more in line with Durant than Thomas.

So no, while $156 million is not the most Brunson can sign for, it would still represent a life changing sum of money not only for him, for for generations of his family to come.

That security may have more value to him than we realize.

And on that note, let’s continue our week-long celebration of the 2023-24 Knicks with an ode to the man himself…

Iversonian

Every time I sat down to write about the Knicks over the last few months, I kept coming back to the improbability of it all.

NBA history follows a very clear script. To succeed in the playoffs, you have to have a hierarchy: a clear number one, a clear number two, often a clear number three, and then a supporting cast that fills in the gaps.

In that respect, the Knicks came within a hair of the Eastern Conference Finals by going decidedly off script.