Jalen Brunson did not do anything on purpose. That is exactly what makes this so good.
The Knicks star was among the invitees to a World Cup after-party thrown by Justin Bieber in New York City last Sunday. A photographer caught the moment Brunson strolled up with his wife and got waved right in without so much as a name check.
Standing in line at the same door, waiting for security to look him up, was Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr.
The clip is short, silent, and devastating. Nets star waits. Knicks star walks in. That is it. That is the entire New York City NBA hierarchy summed up in eight seconds.
Brunson led the Knicks to their first championship last month. He does not need a name tag at any event in the five boroughs. He could walk into Yankee Stadium, sit in the owner’s box, and nobody would ask what he was doing there. That is what winning a title in New York does for you.
Porter is not exactly a random. He was Brooklyn’s best player last season by a comfortable margin after arriving from the Denver Nuggets. In a different city, this treatment would be borderline disrespectful. In New York, where the Nets have not been culturally relevant in years, it is just Tuesday.
The Knicks are expected to sign Brunson to a full max extension next summer. That was already the plan long before this. He left roughly $110 million on the table in 2024 when he took a below-market deal to give New York the flexibility to build around him. Every ounce of goodwill in this town belongs to him because he earned it.
Porter was accompanied at the party by Peyton Watson, who is currently in a testy contract standoff with the Nuggets over his own new deal. So there was probably some shared frustration in that line about basketball economics, if nothing else.
The Brooklyn tax is real. It has been real for years. James Harden did not fix it. Kevin Durant did not fix it. Kyrie Irving did not fix it. The Nets are the second team in a two-team town, and they have been for a very long time now.
Porter is a very good NBA player who could put up 25 points a night on a lot of rosters. But he is not going to move the popularity needle in a city where the champion plays across the river.
Brunson probably did not even see MPJ standing there. That is the funniest part. He was just being Jalen, walking into a room the way he walks into rooms. The rest wrote itself.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
