All these years later, one lesson from Jay Wright has stayed with Jalen Brunson.
“One thing he always said, it’s plastered on every wall, every shirt, the inside of our jerseys — everything — was attitude,” the Knicks’ superstar guard recalled, referring to the former Villanova coach. “Controlling your attitude. I don’t really say that as much as I used to, but I think my kind of twist on it is being able to control what you can control.”
It’s been a big part of his success. Despite winning two national championships at Villanova and being the consensus National Player of the Year in 2017-18, Brunson was a second-round pick. It wasn’t until his fourth season in the NBA that he began to establish himself as a starter. When Brunson joined the Knicks, there was plenty of criticism that he was overpaid.
Tuning out the noise — whether it is positive or negative — has been instrumental to his ascension.
“Controlling your attitude, controlling your effort, those are the things you can control and that’s something he said every day,” Brunson said of Wright. “That’s how we ended huddles, that’s how we started games, practices. It’s kind of what his motto was and once we believed in it, everything became easier.”
Brunson, of course, isn’t the only former Villanova star on the Knicks. Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges were teammates with the Wildcats, too.
They are looking to become the fifth group of teammates to win an NBA and NCAA championship together.
The previous ones are Derek Anderson and Antoine Walker (Kentucky, Heat), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lucius Allen (UCLA, Bucks), John Havlicek and Larry Siegfried (Ohio State, Celtics) and Bill Russell and K.C. Jones (San Francisco, Celtics).
“Man, you can tell Coach Wright has instilled a lot of great qualities in all of these guys,” Mike Brown said. “They’re selfless. They all have a competitive spirit. They’re all about the right stuff, and they’re great human beings to be around.
“So I’m sure it wasn’t just Coach Wright who helped raise them, but to be able to play for him and have that continue at the highest level while competing for championships in college definitely made my job easier. When you have guys like that and those guys are the leaders of your team, we were talking about all of them, and then it rubs off on everybody else, and it just makes for a fantastic environment to be a part of.”