Smaller Jalen Brunson leading Knicks to NBA title is ‘tough’ task: NBA analysts
NY Post
It’s the existential question that will hover over the Knicks until proven otherwise.
Can a team win a championship with a small, less-athletic guard — like the Knicks with Jalen Brunson — as their best player?
“Tough. It’s tough. Even if you just took out the ‘not as athletic’ component, and you just said ‘at his size as your highest-volume shot-taker,’ just look historically how many teams have done that,” former NBA guard Tim Legler, now ESPN’s top NBA analyst, told The Post. “And the teams that have been led by, let’s take a smaller guard that won a championship. Let’s take an Isiah Thomas, for example; look at the balance on their scoring. You didn’t have the discrepancy that you have here where your leading scorer is seven points better than your next leading scorer. Then there’s another five-point drop before you get to your third leading scorer.
“The teams that have done it and won it all with a guy that size as your top shotmaker have been more balanced teams. Chauncey Billups was a little bit bigger than that but still was a grounded player. He wasn’t a super athletic guy; strong base, all that kind of stuff. Look at the balance on that team.”
Entering Saturday’s 106-99 loss to the Suns at Madison Square Garden, Brunson averaged more than six more shots per game than the next closest teammate in Karl-Anthony Towns. In both championship seasons in 1988-89 and 1989-90, Thomas was around two more shots per game than any of his Pistons teammates.
And on the 2003-04 championship Pistons team, Billups wasn’t even the leading scorer or shot-taker; it was Richard Hamilton.
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