Becky Hammon turned her old jab into a compliment on Tuesday, saying Jalen Brunson was the greatest Knick ever and a true 1A star after leading New York to its first championship in 53 years. Speaking to reporters after the Las Vegas Aces shootaround in Las Vegas, she said Brunson had proved history wrong and belonged in the same conversation as Steph Curry and Isiah Thomas.
Hammon did not soften the turn. “Let me just piss off the Knicks fans again and say I think he’s the greatest Knick ever,” she said, then added that Brunson showed “he was that 1A dude” and that his run made him an outlier. She said she thought he played brilliantly, especially down the stretch, and repeated that pays her for her opinion. “I’m never gonna apologize for having an opinion,” she said.
The comment carried extra weight because Hammon had been saying the opposite for years. On ’s NBA Today in 2023, she said the 6-foot-2 Brunson was too small to be the lead star on a championship team and argued, “If your best player is small, you’re not winning.” In May, she stood by that view and said she was speaking historically on the NBA, not backing away from it.
That history is why her Tuesday remarks landed so hard. Hammon said fans had clung to the earlier line and that she found it comical, even though the debate has followed her through the NBA playoffs and was brought up again ahead of the Liberty game against the Aces. Brunson’s title run gave her the cleanest possible answer to her own criticism, but it also exposed the blunt rule she was using: if a smaller lead player wins anyway, the rule was never absolute.
Hammon said, “If he proves me wrong, he proves me wrong. Good for him.” On Tuesday, she decided he had. What she did not answer was whether that ends the argument or just gives Knicks fans a new line to quote back at her the next time Brunson comes up.
