The first thing that people forget about Jalen Brunson is how unremarkable he appeared when he first arrived at Villanova in the fall of 2015. On a good day, I was six feet two. No one was intimidated by this frame. Although he was the undisputed best point guard in his recruiting class when he arrived on campus, there weren’t many elite floor generals in the class, and scouts had been secretly questioning whether his skill level would improve. It was understandable why some people had doubts after seeing him during those early Wildcat practices. He avoided dunking on people. Nobody was blown away by him. He simply continued to make the correct pass.
Of course, that was the trick. He was recruited by Jay Wright, who knew exactly what he was getting. Long before he could legally drive, Brunson’s father Rick had played in the NBA for nine seasons, and Jalen had grown up observing how professionals behaved while sitting in locker rooms. That type of childhood leaves a lasting impression. He was already familiar with pace, spacing, and the minor humiliations a guard must endure before learning how to control a game by the time he arrived at Villanova.
Despite playing a small part, his freshman year culminated in a national championship. On a Villanova team that won the championship in 2016 thanks to Kris Jenkins’s now-famous buzzer-beater, he was a contributor rather than a star. Brunson took his lessons, averaged single digits, and remained silent. In contemporary college basketball, where freshmen frequently arrive expecting the ball and the spotlight in roughly that order, it’s difficult to ignore how uncommon that kind of patience is.
The offense had started to lean in his direction by his sophomore year. He finished the season as a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, averaged close to 15 points and four assists, and was unanimously selected to the first team of the Big East. In retrospect, the team’s devastating loss to Wisconsin in the NCAA tournament’s second round seemed to sharpen something within him. Great players frequently have a particular loss that they will never forget. It appeared to be Brunson’s.
Then came 2017–18, which was more of a coronation than a season. He received almost every award that the sport bestows, including the Wooden Award, the Naismith Trophy, the Oscar Robertson Trophy, and the AP Player of the Year nomination. In addition, he was a second-team Academic All-American, which is noteworthy because it challenges the simple narrative of basketball monasticism. He ran one of the greatest offenses in college basketball history while majoring in communication and maintaining a 3.54 GPA. At last, investors in his future were taking notice.
There was a workmanlike quality to the tournament run that year. Against West Virginia, he scored 27 points. In the Final Four matchup with Kansas, he contributed eighteen points and six assists. Nothing ostentatious. Simply the consistent build-up of wise choices, combined with opponents who were unable to keep up. The program would eventually retire Brunson’s number one jersey after Villanova won the national championship, his second in three years.
Watching old footage now gives me the impression that what he was doing at Villanova wasn’t actually college basketball at all. It was more akin to a protracted apprenticeship, the kind of instruction that only becomes worthwhile years later, on a different floor, in different lighting. In 2018, NBA scouts allowed him to fall to the 33rd pick. Since then, the majority of them have acknowledged that they made a mistake. They might have been watching the wrong things. In every gym he entered, he was never the most athletic guard. He was nearly always the most intelligent. That is still the same.
