[Shelburne] The main issue the Mavericks encountered was when Doncic and Brunson played together. Neither Doncic nor Brunson was a strong defender, so teams knew to target both to try to play them off the court.
DONNIE NELSON STARTED scouting Brunson in high school, but his connection to the family went back even further.
Nelson had been an assistant coach for the Golden State Warriors and Mavericks under his father, Don Nelson, in the late 1990s. As a son trying to learn from his father and make his own way, he admired the way Rick’s agent, Leon Rose, was hustling to get him a shot in the league.
“Leon couldn’t get Rick a job in the NBA to save his life,” Nelson said. “He was working so hard to get him into the league. But [Leon] didn’t have any money back then, so I’d always let him sleep on my couch.”
Nelson never ended up signing Rick to one of his teams, but he thought back on those days years later when he started evaluating Jalen.
“It was clear dating back to high school he had the right stuff in the DNA,” Nelson said. “It’s not just decision-making on the court, it’s the way you could tell his teammates would take a bullet for him.”
Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle quickly took a liking to Brunson and inserted him into the rotation.
As a rookie he averaged 9.3 points, starting 38 of the 73 games he played. In his second year, his scoring dipped to 8.2 points per game, playing mostly off the ball as Doncic carried the load.
The main issue the Mavericks encountered was when Doncic and Brunson played together. Neither Doncic nor Brunson was a strong defender, so teams knew to target both to try to play them off the court. Which is exactly what happened in the Mavericks’ first-round playoff series loss to the LA Clippers in 2020.
And if someone had to sit because of defensive limitations, it was always going to be Brunson. Questions about his long-term fit with Doncic, who still considers Brunson a close friend, began to emerge.
After that, teams began regularly calling Dallas to inquire about Brunson’s availability, according to league and Mavericks sources.
When it came time to offer Brunson an extension in summer 2021, the Mavericks told him they preferred to wait to see how the team performed so they could determine if the group was capable of contending for a championship.
They also wanted time to evaluate whether it was feasible to re-sign both Brunson and wing Dorian Finney-Smith, Mavericks team sources said.
According to ESPN’s reporting at the time, Brunson had informed the Mavericks in January that he was willing to sign the extension if it was offered then. But Dallas made the decision to hold off until after the trade deadline in case the Mavericks had the opportunity to trade for a star, as an extension would have prevented Brunson from being eligible to be traded before the deadline.
Dallas finally did offer him the extension after the trade deadline, at the same time they offered Finney-Smith an identical contract. Brunson declined it.
He had become a starter alongside Doncic in December and was having the best season of his young career as the Mavericks went on a surprising run to the Western Conference finals.
He even had a starring turn in their first-round series win over the Utah Jazz, scoring a career-high 41 points in Game 2 and averaging 27.8 points in the six-game series while Doncic missed time with a left calf injury.
After the season, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said re-signing Brunson was a top priority.
League rules at the time stipulated that teams could not contact free agents until the evening before free agency began on July 1.
Still, it had been clear for weeks that the Knicks were targeting Brunson as an unrestricted free agent.
On June 23, 2022, draft day, New York cleared roughly $30 million in salary cap space to sign Brunson in a complicated series of transactions that ultimately sent Kemba Walker and the draft rights to Jalen Duren to the Detroit Pistons.
The Mavericks still believed they had a chance to retain Brunson because of what he had expressed back in January.
What they didn’t realize was that it wasn’t just more money the Knicks were offering. It was about family.