Knicks' Jalen Brunson blocks out hostile Pistons fans
Jalen Brunson #11 of the Knicks and Cade Cunningham #2 of the Detroit Pistons look on during the second quarter in Game Three of the Eastern Conference First Round NBA Playoffs at Little Caesars Arena on April 24, 2025 in Detroit. Credit: Getty Images/Gregory Shamus
DETROIT
Bring it on again, Detroit. Jalen Brunson isn’t going to flinch.
It didn’t work in Game 3 when you booed loudly and in unison every time he had the ball in his hands, which of course was a good chunk of the game. And it didn’t work when you unleashed an obscene chant, the kind reserved for Trae Young at Madison Square Garden, every time Brunson went to the line.
Brunson heard your pain and chose to ignore it.
Instead, he scored 30 points and directed a balanced offense to give the Knicks a 118-116 victory and a 2-1 lead in this first-round playoff series. And you can bet he will try to ignore you again and give his team a commanding lead with another win on Sunday.
“To Jalen, those are cheers,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “He lives for that stuff.”
Brunson learned early how to block out the nasty. When he was at Stevenson High in suburban Chicago, he was taunted so viciously and crudely that the school assigned a security guard to accompany him to road games. The jeering took a different turn when he got to Villanova and had to deal with pregaming college kids trying to outdo one another.
For the most part, playing in the NBA has been a lot easier. A short, hard-working overachiever, Brunson is not the type of player NBA fans typically love to hate. At the Garden, even when he has a rare dud of a game, he is routinely serenaded with “M-V-P!’’ cheers. On the road, arenas often are dotted with Brunson jerseys as there seems to be a solid Knicks base almost everywhere the team plays.
That’s why a few of his teammates were surprised by the level of orchestrated venom directed at Brunson in Detroit. Even though Brunson is the face of the Knicks and can get under fans’ skins with some dramatics when he draws fouls, few had heard any crowd ride him this hard.
“He handled it like a pro,” Mitchell Robinson said. “Most people, they start spasming when people do that [stuff]. But he didn’t do that.”
Josh Hart, Brunson’s good friend and former teammate at Villanova, has seen him brush off this kind of hostility before.
“Yeah, he’s not new to it,” Hart said. “I’ve been with JB in a lot of different atmospheres. This obviously, it was a good atmosphere. College, you have sometimes little more rambunctious drunk college kids talking crazy. I’ve been in a lot of atmospheres with him and it doesn’t faze him.”
Hart did acknowledge that Detroit had taken it to a new level, adding that he had never been in an NBA arena that had so loudly gone after one of his teammates. Hart likened it to the treatment that Draymond Green is receiving from Houston fans in Golden State’s first-round series with the Rockets.
“Houston did it to Draymond. Boston did it to Draymond. We don’t care,” Hart said. “We’re going to go out there and play our game. Nothing the fans do really dictates how we go about anything.
“That’s the crowd doing their job trying to throw him off. He’s Clutch Player of the Year. In those moments, he’s not too worried about the crowd. He’s focused on helping this team win, and he did that.”
Brunson has averaged 33.7 points in three games, fourth in the NBA this postseason heading into Friday night’s play. Yet it wasn’t his point total that was most important in this game.
Rather, after being criticized for not getting his teammates involved in the Knicks’ Game 2 loss, Brunson was able to run an offense with more facilitation as three other Knicks scored at least 20 points. Brunson had nine assists and gave his teammates an opportunity to be stars, and he did it in the most hostile environment.
And to top it off, he even gave the Pistons fans their props after the game, saying it’s the toughest crowd he’s ever played in front of in the NBA.
“They made the environment special for the home team, and we found a way to win the game,” Brunson said. “But it was definitely a lot. So you’ve got to give a lot of credit to that fan base.”
Credit, yes. But Brunson still plans to ignore you.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
