Jalen Brunson believes the New York Knicks’ biggest challenge entering the 2026-27 season will be moving past the championship they just won.
Speaking on the Road Trippin’ Show, Brunson said the defending champions cannot allow the praise surrounding their title run to change the mentality that carried them through a turbulent 2025-26 season.
“We have all these people telling us how great we are, we just you know, we won in New York and everyone in New York is up on their high horse everyone saying the best things about us even though middle of the year they were probably saying the worst as well,” Brunson said. “When we were 2-9.”
New York recovered from that 2-9 start to finish 53-29, good for third place in the Eastern Conference. The Knicks then went 16-3 in the playoffs, defeating Atlanta in six games, Philadelphia in a four-game sweep and Cleveland in another sweep before beating San Antonio 4-1 in the NBA Finals.
Brunson was at the center of that run. He averaged 26.0 points and 6.8 assists during the regular season while shooting 46.7% from the field and earning All-NBA Second Team honors.
His production increased in the postseason, where he averaged 28.4 points and 6.1 assists across 19 games. Brunson shot 46.5% from the field and 36.3% from three-point range and was named Finals MVP after New York captured its first championship since 1973.
Despite that success, Brunson said the Knicks must treat the title as finished business once the new season begins.
“So it was definitely like a roller coaster of a ride but, it’s important for us to come in to the season and be like, ‘All right that’s over with,’” Brunson said. “Right? We don’t want to speak of the trophy, we don’t want to talk about the trophy, we don’t want to see the trophy, right? We want to come in with the same mindset if not even tougher mindset we had last year.”
New York returns most of the core that powered its championship run. Karl-Anthony Towns averaged 20.1 points and 11.9 rebounds in the regular season, while OG Anunoby contributed 16.7 points and earned Second Team All-Defense recognition.
Mikal Bridges appeared in all 82 games and averaged 14.4 points, while Josh Hart added 12.0 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists.
The Knicks did lose center Mitchell Robinson in free agency, but retained Landry Shamet and Jose Alvarado while adding veteran center Andre Drummond.
