Jalen Brunson’s latest return to Dallas offers another reminder of how he changed the Knicks

DALLAS — It was not that long ago Jalen Brunson called Dallas home.
The Knicks’ star point guard spent his first four NBA seasons with the Mavericks, evolving from a valuable role player to a standout second option next to Luka Dončić.
Brunson wanted to sign a long-term extension with Dallas — a stance he has detailed since his departure — but he ultimately reached free agency and signed with the Knicks before the 2022-23 season.
It’s a saga that changed the trajectory of both franchises.
With the Knicks visiting the Mavericks on the eve of Thanksgiving, Wednesday night’s game offered another reminder of Brunson’s whirlwind path to New York.
The Mavericks selected Brunson, a two-time NCAA champion at Villanova, with the No. 33 pick in the 2018 draft — the same draft in which they traded for Dončić to be their franchise cornerstone.
Brunson started 38 games as a rookie and 16 more as a sophomore, then broke out in 2020-21, when he averaged 12.6 points and finished fourth in Sixth Man of the Year voting.
But Brunson’s playing time plummeted during the 2021 postseason under then-head coach Rick Carlisle, who did not use the rising guard for more than 15 minutes in Games 5, 6 or 7 of the Mavericks’ first-round loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Still, Brunson was happy with the Mavericks.
“Before my fourth season in Dallas, my last season in Dallas, we tried to extend our contract,” Brunson, 28, said in February on the “All The Smoke” podcast.
“The most we could get was, like, four years and $55 million. Obviously, we wanted to do that. I wanted to stay there. I thought I would be there for a long time and I liked my role there.”
But an extension never came.
Brunson put up career-best numbers in 2021-22 in his lone season under head coach Jason Kidd, demonstrating his ability to lead an offense during multiple stretches in which Dončić was out.
Those stretches included the start of the 2022 postseason, when Brunson led the Mavericks to two first-round wins against the Utah Jazz as Doncic sat out with a calf strain. He scored 41 points in one of those victories.
Brunson averaged 21.6 points per game during Dallas’ run to the Western Conference Finals that year, up from the 16.3 points per game he averaged during that regular season.
Brunson hit free agency with the Knicks in desperate need of a point guard. They had just finished with a 37-45 record — and in 11th place in the Eastern Conference — while primarily deploying Kemba Walker, Derrick Rose and rookie Immanuel Quickley at the position.
About a month before they signed Brunson to a four-year, $104 million contract, the Knicks hired his father, Rick Brunson, as an assistant coach.
Mark Cuban, then the Mavericks’ principal owner, would later tell reporters of his team’s pursuit, “Where it went south was when Rick took over. When the parent took over, or the parents took over.”
Cuban has since expanded on his stance, saying on Brunson’s “Roommates Show” podcast that Brunson’s camp asked the Mavericks to meet in New York during his free agency.
“We’re like, ‘We want to keep him … but we’re not going to just show up in New York for you just to say no,’” Cuban said. “There was a time where it was, ‘OK, what is the number? Give us a feel.’ [We were told], ‘Well, can’t talk to JB, he’s going to a wedding.’ And that was pretty much the last we heard.”
Brunson said on that podcast episode that he did not hear from the Mavericks after receiving the Knicks’ offer, stating his agent, Aaron Mintz, told him Dallas was “not giving us a number.” Cuban, meanwhile, said the Mavericks were told the number they offered was “too low.”
Last week, Brunson’s father shared his side of the story.
“They wanted you to go into free agency — which I would’ve done, too — to see if you’re gonna get the mid-level or the $55 [million], and then they could match it or whatever,” Rick Brunson, who played three seasons with the Knicks, said on his son’s podcast.
“That’s a business decision, and I knew that. … So to say ‘the parents,’ I didn’t like that particularly, because I played in this league. I understand how this works. I was never mad at [Cuban].”
Both teams have made out well in the two-plus seasons since. Brunson quickly emerged as the Knicks’ leader, taking them to the second round of the playoffs in both of his first two seasons with New York. He signed a four-year, $156.5 million extension in the offseason and was named the 36th captain in Knicks history.
Brunson entered Wednesday averaging 26.4 points and 6.6 assists per game in his Knicks career.
The Mavericks pivoted after losing Brunson with a February 2023 trade with the Nets for Kyrie Irving. Though they missed the postseason in 2022-23 after that midseason trade, the Mavericks made it to the NBA Finals last year, with Irving fitting as both a second point guard and as an off-ball complement to the ball-dominant Dončić.
Brunson sat out of his first return to Dallas in December 2022 with a hip injury, then recorded 30 points and eight assists in January in his first-ever appearance as an opposing player at the American Airlines Center.
And while Wednesday’s return featured fewer storylines than those prior visits, it offered another opportunity to reflect on how Brunson changed the Knicks.