NEW YORK — Knicks star Jalen Brunson said Sunday afternoon that his goal is to return before the end of the regular season, but that his top priority is to be fully healthy before the Knicks begin what he, and they, hope will be a long playoff run this spring.
“Realistically, I’m hoping to play before the playoffs,” Brunson said in a pregame media session at his locker before New York hosted the Portland Trail Blazers at Madison Square Garden. “It’s good for me to get some game reps before we go into that type of stretch run, but the most important thing is trying to be 100% healthy.”
Brunson has been out since March 6, when he suffered a nasty ankle sprain on an awkward landing late in a loss to the Lakers in Los Angeles. The All-NBA guard had 39 points and 10 assists in that game, his latest performance in a brilliant season that once again has him in contention for some MVP votes and another All-NBA selection.
With 61 games played, however, Brunson is still a few games short of hitting the 65-game threshold required to be eligible for those awards. And while he said he’d like to get to that benchmark and be able to earn those honors, Brunson again reiterated that his top priority is to be ready for the postseason.
“Individually, yeah,” Brunson said, when asked if being in contention for awards mattered to him, “but I just want to make sure I’m fully healthy before I go out there.”
As for his ability to be ready for the playoffs, Sunday’s media session — while lacking any definitive return date for the star guard over the final eight games of the regular season following Sunday’s game against Portland, Brunson did shed some positive light on his recovery process.
He said he’s been cleared for “basketball activities” — though he declined, on multiple occasions, to say whether or not that includes contact. He also said he’s been sprinting, as well as doing cutting and stopping and starting on his ankle, and that he’s continued to feel better as he clears each benchmark on his path back to the court.
But while Brunson has famously shown an ability to play through injuries during his tenure with the Knicks, he said in this situation it’s a combination of him managing pain tolerance, getting over the mental hurdle of returning to the court after the ankle sprain and working with the medical staff to decide when the best time to return will be, rather than him dictating what that return path will be.
“Yeah, well, like I said, we’re going to communicate,” Brunson said of his discussions with the medical team, when asked who would determine when he would return. “I never want to say, I never want to put them in a position where I’m making the decisions because it’s honestly a team thing, but when I know it’s something minor and I know I can play through it, I can play through it. There’s something like this and I just want to make sure we’re on the same page and now we’ve been on the same page for the past couple of weeks and so we’re going to continue to progress that way.”
New York had gone 6-5 since Brunson got hurt entering Sunday’s game. That’s a stretch that’s also featured his backup, Deuce McBride, missing a chunk of time with a groin strain, an injury that kept him out of Sunday’s game, too.
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said McBride, who has missed five consecutive games including Sunday, is also doing some on-court work. And, speaking about how the team has responded to Brunson’s absence, Thibodeau said it’s provided an opportunity for other players to step up and shoulder a bigger load.
“We’ve said this all along from the standpoint of, you’re not going to replace Jalen individually,” Thibodeau said. “You have to do it collectively, and I think we’ve done that. And it’s been good for our group from the standpoint of anytime someone goes out, it’s an opportunity for someone else to go in. But I think our defense and our rebounding, we know that everyone is capable of doing that. And if we lock into that and keep our turnovers down, we know we’ll be in position to win.
“That’s what we’re striving for. Continue to improve. And when Jalen comes back obviously that adds a lot to our team.”
For his part, Brunson said he’s appreciated how his teammates have responded to his absence.
“I think there’ve been nights where obviously we didn’t perform well as a team, but then the next day they respond, so that’s all we can focus on,” Brunson said. “There’s going to be times and days and games where things don’t go our way, but it’s how do we respond from those moments and how do we get better? I feel like they’ve progressed that way and they’ve done a good job.”
That hasn’t, however, diminished his frustration level as he’s been forced to watch his teammates play without him.
“It sucks,” he said. “It’s not fun.
“I really wish I was out there.”
Source: espn.com