Chris McMonigle REVEALS Why Jalen Brunson Is the TOUGHEST Star in New York!

**Chris McMonigle** (0:00)
We talked about it a couple of times. Today we found out that Jalen Brunson had surgery. It was first reported by Ian Begley of SMY, who does a great job and is all over the team. He's reported that Jalen Brunson felt a pain in his shooting wrist during the Knicks Finals run. He now had surgery on that wrist and forearm. He's going to be out for a couple of months. Think about, again, whenever you hear Jalen Brunson had surgery out for a couple of months, makes you nervous. On a shooting hand, no doubt, makes you nervous. The first part is, hope he's okay, but it is July. You expect him to be back and ready to play.
But think about what he went through. I don't know, in what I've read so far, it hasn't been pinpointed to when he heard it, but he definitely heard it before the last game of the season. He definitely heard it before dominating and dropping 40 and being the absolute stud that he was throughout that entire postseason. Maybe it explains some of the poor play. We did see some games there in the NBA Finals that weren't great, and OG Ananobe was on his way to winning the NBA Finals MVP for me until that last game. But not only is Jalen Brunson the savior of this team, not only is Jalen Brunson the man who resurrected this Nick franchise from the doldrums of the last 25 years, not only is he the MVP of this team, the captain of this team, the Finals MVP, but man, he is one tough son of a gun. And yeah, I know he has a little bit of a reputation as a foul merchant, a new term we all love. I don't think flopper is fair. I heard Tiki talking about this earlier today. I don't think Jalen Brunson is a flopper as much as we've seen other floppers in the NBA. But yeah, does he, does he use his excellent footwork to try and garner contact in hopes of getting to the foul line? Sure.
Sure. A lot of players do. And he's one of them. And he's very good at it. But you very rarely see him flopping all over the place. But yes, he looks for contact. He's kind of developed a very successful head nod and jerk back every time he does get contact. I think that's fair. But we are seeing a guy who is just an absolute bulldog, who's there in the biggest moments. I mean, look, again, there's nothing we could say that we don't know. He just won the NBA finals. The Knicks are champions. It's still amazing to say. We were just talking about with Gallo, looking at him wear the shirt, just saying it again, that it's kind of worn off on him now that the Knicks are NBA championship. It shouldn't. It shouldn't wear off on us that the Knicks are champions. But I mean, Jalen Brunson was dealing with something. And again, it's not just the small pain. He needed surgery on it. He needed surgery on his shooting wrist.
And he went through that NBA playoffs playing like he did. Game one, the fourth quarter of game one of the Eastern Conference, the final game, game five of the NBA Finals. He did that possibly, certainly game five he did in the NBA Finals. But you know, game one, dragging them from down 20 some odd points.
He did that with an injury to his wrist and forearm that required surgery. This dude's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And as the Knicks, you know, replace Mitchell Robinson with Drummond, I think today they announced the signing of Landry Shamet. So they're running it back for the most part. They're going to be a little bit different with no Mitch and Drummond instead. He's a lesser player. He's not quite the rebounder, not quite the defender.
You know, he's a lesser version of Mitch, there's no doubt. They'll be worse than they were last year with just that switch. We'll see what happens. You know, maybe guys step up and are better. So the team could still be better and there's going to be some flexibility that they'll have. But ultimately, they're champions and they're led by not only a great player, not only a clutch player, not only a dominant player, not only a player with outstanding footwork, not only a player that we marvel at, but one tough son of a bitch. Let's go. Let's go.
Unbelievable. You gotta love, you gotta love Jalen Brunson. He's the king of New York.
We need Judge to get back, hit some big home runs, win the World Series, and then we can have the discussion again. Then it's up for debate. Can we put it back up to debate, Judge? Can we? Let's go. Big game tonight for the Yankees as well. 888-808-1019.