Jalen Brunson in a win over the Hawks - 34 points, 5 assists, zero FTA
Jalen “Free Throw Merchant” Brunson with an all buckets performance - 15-29 overall, 4-11 from three, 0-0 from the free throw line. Ethical basketball.
That FTA per game about to drop even lower
He’s definitely the player with the biggest gap between reputation and actual level of whistle lol
Going up against the r/nba darlings in the Pacers ruined his reputation here for life
You can see it in how posts about him and the Knicks turn out here on this sub. Any highlight for Brunson does alright but the second there’s a marginal call that goes his way that gets posted here, it gets a ton of engagement and the comments are all:
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE NBA?”
“I NEVER WATCH ANYTHING BUT HIGHLIGHTS ANYWAYS BUT THIS IS WHY I STOPPED WATCHING!”
“BRUNSON CAN’T DO ANYTHING WITHOUT CALLS!”
“HAS A PLAYER EVER GOTTEN CTE FROM SNAPPING THEIR HEAD BACK ALL THE TIME TO GET CALLS?”
A while ago, the post about Brunson getting an egh foul but legit one on the Pacers even after official review gets posted and did numbers. However his clutch shot to get the lead later in the game didn’t get as much hype around it. You also had the undercut fouls on 3pt shots against Cleveland. More comments complaining about the legit calls than anything.
I remember a couple years ago during the playoffs they counted the disparity in scoring with and without FT attempts. Brunson was top 5 straight up but when they put the filter of no FTs, Brunson jumped up.
The sub loves hating on the Knicks. They got so used to “lolKnick” that they can’t take them being good and they silently sit there impatiently waiting for their “gotcha” moment to shit on the Knicks again. r/nba collective likes to think they’re above sensationistic nonsense like what Stephen A. Smith and Kendrick Perkins put out but they’re the same except people like those 2 but they are getting paid for it.
It‘s a shame because he‘s so fun to watch.
I blame his hair
It’s his big head tbh
All it takes one post a month to uphold the narrative lmao
I will not lie, I let the propaganda get to me. I thought he was averaging 8-9 fta last season.
He was averaging closer to 5-6 for most of the season until the last week or so when he been on a scoring tear and it bumped to 7, which literally every star averages
It’s really unfortunate that some ppl might miss out cuz it’s really something witnessing an incredible run from JB these past few years
I’m actually a JB fan, I don’t really care about foul baiting. I didn’t watch many of his regular season games and he does shoot a lot of free throws in the post-season, so I just assumed that was normal for him.
myman.gif
thank you for acknowledging this lol
he may not do it as often but watching him throw his massive bobblehead around is hilarious
His average might not match his reputation.
Re-watch the playoff series against the Pistons last season though and tell me he doesn’t deserve it.
Most Ethical Jalen
Meanwhile Karl “Dark Arts”-Anthony Towns had 18 FTAs.
They were pretty much all legit fouls though. Hawks had no answer for containing him in the paint. Several of the fouls were literal blatant grabs just to make him earn it on the line, which KAT always does well so it’s all good.
Definitely lol. Just funny to see KAT finally get calls for once.
The Hawks announcers were so salty towards KAT talking about he’s just throwing his body and he’s always falling on the floor… lol smhhh
I’d be salty too if I had to watch this sorry ass Hawks team.
None of them were legit
Elaborate
Idk I didn’t watch the game I just know
Insane seeing what KAT can do when fouls are actually being called
SOPHISTICATED AS FUCK
BING BONG
THUMBS UP
so fun to watch, surgical player
That’s the perfect word for his game. It ain’t always the prettiest, but it’s usually precise and with intention.
picking apart the defense with his dribble and all the tiny intricacies in his game makes me giddy as a basketball nut.
Yeah for sure. Guarding him is like trying to connect two north poles of a magnet. Like no matter what you do, he will always read you and find the way to duke you and get where he needs to get to in order to score. It’s so fun to watch.
It‘s fun too because unlike, say, Wemby, Brunsons footwork is something everyone could achieve with enough dedication
why are we dissing wemby to bring up brunson
wemby has goat ceiling and is the most fun to watch player in the league right now
is it because he called the knicks unsophisticated?
Lmao he wasn’t, you gotta chill a little. His point was that Wemby’s physical attributes are such that it’s impossible for any of us at home to replicate how he is effective on the court, but Brunson is the same height/build as a lot of us couch hoopers, so there is a certain element of “I could do that” to his game which makes him exciting to watch.
ohhhhh lol my bad i just read it wrong
for sure, its insane that he can be so elite at that height
I‘m not dissing Wemby at all. I love watching him.
Brunson is just more relatable as a human being on a basketball court
nah my bad i read it wrong
He brought up Wemby because he’s a freak of nature while Brunson is about the size of an average human
Swishing and dishing!
Teams have just been letting him take the big shot in the clutch 1 on 1 to take the lead. How do they keep letting it happen?
tbf he’s got picked this game lol…
he got like 3 other buckets before that but yeah not an unreasonable move to not blitz when you have NAW and Dyson to deploy
Yeah you’d think they’d be even better defensively with this wing group…
Our center is the size of a large SF
Ethical hoops! But for real when was the last time a player branded as a merchant had literally 0 Free throw attempts in a game?
While scoring 30+ points, too.
This guy hates Dyson Daniels and Jalen Suggs
I swear he always cooks Dyson, Great Barrier Thief my ass lol
Bro talked shit in an interview last year lollll been getting cooked since
Ethical captain
Fuckin Big Headed Immanuel Kant ovah here with the most ethical 30-piece you’ll ever see
He played against a real FT merchant and knew he couldn’t compete
Trae had at least two plays where he ran into a player and fell down. And got the call
And still only came out with 9 points lmao
Big head recognizes Balding head.
Jalen Brunson is my hero.
Midrange assassin. Bro is literally born to play basketball. Dare I say one of the best to ever do it when it comes to footwork and touch?
Dark arts
Watching him consistently make tough clutch shots while other stars hunt free throws (including Trae down the stretch tonight) and he still gets called a foul baiter. It’s fucking crazy. Such a casual fan misconception.
Bro is part of the ethical hooper club
Sophisticated basketball won today
He’s so good
Sophisticated and ethical hoops? That’s my Cap.
Better than Luka
Unironically
Brunson doesn’t even average the most FTA per game on his own team.
The foul baiting narrative is simply not well supported by the data
Better than the Greek fraud
hes way better than thanasis true
better than Kostas???
Doesn’t take much to be better than Kosta Koufos
Ethical hoops
ETHICAL HOOPER.
Ain’t he a FT Merchant though?
Sophisticated basketball
But he throws his head back guys
I don’t care how “ethical” he is. Tonight, he didn’t need it, but does he lean into contact, or sell calls? Yeah. And when he does, it’s the defender’s fault for biting on the pump fake. I understand that it’s infuriating if you’re not a fan of a team with a guy who’s good at getting to the line. I hate it when Embiid or Jimmy Butler or whoever else does it to the Knicks. But at the end of the day, short of anything that could injure someone or anything like that, you have to do whatever you can to win. Getting two from the line is just as valuable as getting two from the field, if not more valuable because it gets the opposing player/team that much closer to being in foul trouble, or even deeper into it. You can’t give more leeway to the refs to swallow their whistle because it makes flawed human perception more important to adjudicating the game. You can’t raise the threshold for illegal contact because it would make scoring impossible. You can’t lower the penalty for fouls because there whenever a player gets an open look they’ll just get fouled. Every sport has THAT PART which makes the game not all that fun to watch for a bit. Baseball has batters intentionally fouling off pitches. Football (both kinds) has the offense often essentially playing to keep the ball out of the opposing team’s possession when they’re up late. Nothing’s perfect.
Another example of why people hate the modern NBA. As tonight demonstrated Brunson has the talent to put up 30+ on good splits without foul baiting / flopping. But the league rewards that style of play so superstars are going to continue to do it and make for shit games.