Jalen Brunson's New York Knicks proved Becky Hammon wrong when they made the 2025 NBA Eastern Conference Finals. In December 2023, the Hall of Famer deemed the point guard incapable of leading his Knicks into the "top tier" of Eastern Conference teams.
Especially with a core just entering their primes, making the Eastern Conference Finals again this season cemented the Knicks as part of the top flight of eastern squads. Their pending NBA Finals trip should have been the cherry on top.
Instead, Hammon moved the goalposts — again. Her latest comments, in the wake of Monday night's series victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, prove that she doesn't have any intention of acknowledging what the actual issue was with her take. Or acknowledging what her actual take was.
Hammon moves goalposts after Brunson leads Knicks to NBA Finals
Hammon's take is commonly framed as only having been about the Knicks' chances in the NBA Finals. She even said, just three months after her initial offering, that she hadn't claimed anything else. There was no pushback from ESPN's panel in February 2024.
The Hall of Famer explained, both times, that history held all the evidence necessary to determine that Brunson wouldn't reach the Stephen Curry level of smaller guards.
Now that the Knicks have qualified for the NBA Finals, Hammon was asked about Brunson a third time. She made clear that she had no intention of acknowledging her initial error.
"I speak from experience. Allen Iverson got MVP, and he lost in the finals. I think the two best teams are probably in the West, but I'm up for being proven wrong...I said what I said. If he proves me wrong, he proves me wrong," the coach told the Associated Press's Mark Anderson.
While Hammon claims to have no problem standing on her initial comments, she's never actually acknowledged them. Or that Brunson has already proven her wrong, twice.
That's been the root of Knick fans' problem with her statements for quite some time — not that she dared to doubt their beloved point guard.
What's the point of talking sports if the past defines the future?
Hammon pointed out the several guards that have defied that stereotype, clarifying that Brunson would not prove to be one of them. Her rationale was that it hadn't happened before — and that, when it had, it was because of talent that Brunson didn't have.
"That's the other thing, I think Jalen Brunson's a hell of a player – a hell of a player. I'm speaking historically on the NBA with what I said. I don't know why everybody's so stuck on that. I said it two years ago," Hammon posited.
The Hall of Famer deciding to lean fully on history was discouraging. Sports are special in large part because of the novelty of watching human beings defy expectations and break records. There would be no point in playing the games if historical precedent determined their outcomes.
Instead of explaining what Brunson would need to do to defy history, potentially even sharing analysis from her own career as a smaller guard, Hammon used that past to set limits on Brunson's future.
He's already reached those limits. And he's in the midst of pushing them even higher, having just won Eastern Conference MVP as the Knicks head to their first NBA Finals this century.
Hammon doesn't owe fans anything – the coach certainly doesn't have to acknowledge her old comments or justify them. But every time she moves the bar that Brunson has to clear even higher, it brings attention back to her original opinion, and just how brutally wrong it's proven to be.
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