Rick Brunson’s growing influence within the Knicks has had some unintended consequences. The assistant coach, to his credit, is not a nepotism hire, despite his son Jalen Brunson being the best player on the team. The elder Brunson joined the staff under Tom Thibodeau and managed to survive the axing of colleagues. While that may have impacted his role in the locker room, Rick makes sure that, at the very least, his son knows when he messes up.
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Jalen joined the team a month after Rick, and it seems that being coached by his father has helped him blossom into an all-timer for the franchise. He has been a revelation this season, averaging 28.9 points, 6.3 assists, and 3.3 rebounds across 36 games.
Despite that, every time he turns a ball over, he can see his dad frowning from the corner of his eye as the two exchange awkward glances. And those moments can sometimes turn into brief shouting matches, as Rick recently revealed.
Explaining the unique situation of coaching his own son for the Knicks, Rick recalled his initial years in the Big Apple. “My first year here, I was bad as a coach. I was bad to other players because I was like, ‘he got all this money, and if he fails … that’s my son, they are going to kill him. He had played great for 82 games. That was on pins and needles,” he recounted.
“Now as he became who he was, it was so much easier to sit there and relax and watch him do this thing. But I will tell you the first time, I yelled at him,” Brunson Sr. began telling the hilarious tale of confronting his son from the sidelines.
“And he turned around to me and said, ‘Sit the F down.’ I said, ‘m*******’ and looked at him like WTF,” Rick added, laughing, still a little taken aback by Jalen’s unexpected response.
It took a few moments for the apparent disrespect to sink in before Rick realized that he had also cussed out a few coaches on the sidelines when he played.
“I said, ‘You know what, you can do that. If that’s off the court, I will beat you up, man. Because if another player yelled at me …” he laughed, further revealing that once or twice a year, Jalen would let him know that he needed to sit down and “chill the f*** out.”
Well, that is a very functional father-son relationship, so congratulations to both Rick and Jalen on managing that.
