It took Jalen Brunson some time to become an NBA champion. Somewhere, a player who is composed under duress, accurate when it counts most, and capable of leading a team through four consecutive playoff games while scoring at least 37 points is developed. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, a peaceful northern suburb roughly 35 miles outside of Chicago, was Brunson’s “somewhere.”
It’s not exactly where he grew up. Before his family moved to Lincolnshire in 2010, Brunson was born in New Jersey and attended middle school there. It’s the kind of move that could be easily overlooked as a footnote in a biography. However, it proved to be very important. Something clicked when a young Brunson entered Stevenson’s gym. He discovered a culture, a program, and ultimately a stage.
Brunson had guided the Patriots to three Illinois High School Association state finals by the time he graduated, including a Class 4A state title at Carver Arena in Peoria in 2015. He scored a record 30 points in that championship game. In his senior year, he was named Illinois Mr. Basketball. It’s difficult to ignore how early the pattern—big stage, biggest performance, team victories—was set.
A particular type of player is sharpened by playing high school basketball in Illinois for some reason. No one gives you anything, the gyms are noisy, and the competition is intense. Brunson took it all in. You can trace some of that back to those Lincolnshire winters and a state program that required constant excellence before you even reached college, as you watch him now, surveying the floor, making the pass, and then making the shot when the pass wasn’t there.
He picked Villanova over Illinois after Stevenson, which must have disappointed some home fans. However, it was the correct decision. The Dallas Mavericks were willing to take a chance on him at pick No. 33 in the 2018 NBA Draft after he helped the Wildcats win two NCAA national titles in three seasons. He was chosen in the latter part of the second round. It still seems nearly impossible to reconcile that detail with his current situation.
After four seasons in Dallas and a 2022 trip to the Western Conference Finals, the team moved to New York. No one, perhaps not even Brunson, could have accurately predicted how his second season with the Knicks ended. He joined Michael Jordan as the only two guards to score 45 points in a closeout game when he set a Finals record in Game 5 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. 94-90 was the Knicks’ victory. It was their first title in fifty-three years. Brunson won the MVP award for the Finals.
Rick Brunson, his father, played for eight different NBA teams over the course of nine seasons. Now that he is an assistant coach for the Knicks, father and son share the locker room, the flights, and the discussions about what it truly takes to win. It’s easy to romanticize that dynamic—two basketball players who fully understand one another—but it’s probably more pragmatic than poetic.
“From Stevenson High School to NBA Finals MVP,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker stated bluntly following the victory. Jalen, Illinois is proud of you.That statement has a genuine quality that cuts through the political clutter. Because it all began there, in a high school gym in a suburban area of Chicago, where a young man from New Jersey discovered exactly what kind of player he would become.
