Becky Hammon Got Kendrick Perkins Mad Arguing Jalen Brunson Is ‘Too Small’ To Be A 1A Player

The New York Knicks have gotten off to a solid start to the 2023-24 season, holding the 5-seed in the East at 16-11, with Jalen Brunson deserving credit for a large portion of their success.

Brunson appears on track for his first ever All-Star selection, averaging 25.3 points, 5.9 assists, and 4.0 rebounds per game on 47.2/45.8/80.1 shooting splits, as he’s been nothing short of spectacular for the Knicks this season. Brunson’s terrific play has allowed them to navigate injuries and some ups and downs from Julius Randle and RJ Barrett to remain solidly over .500. After back-to-back wins over the Lakers and Nets, the Knicks became a national topic of conversation as pundits debated their viability as a real contender in the East this season.

On ESPN’s NBA Today on Thursday, Becky Hammon joined the crew and said she thought the Knicks needed “a 1A dude” to be a contender and lacked that guy. Perkins said they have that guy in Brunson, but Hammon noted he was “too small” to hold that title and rattled off how the only recent example of a championship team being led by a “small” guy is Stephen Curry and the Warriors — it should be noted Isiah Thomas would be the other outlier in this category.

That had Perkins upset and he tried valiantly to defend Brunson but struggled to really get the point to land, first pointing out how Brunson made a conference finals (with the crew pointing out that was Luka Doncic’s team, first) and then trying to argue he belongs where you’d put Donovan Mitchell. The problem there is, I don’t think many folks would put Mitchell in the same category as the Giannis-LeBron-Jokic-Steph category. Hammon also points out that she’s saying this as someone who was a small player who got buckets and she knows from experience how the game of basketball is just generally dominated by those who are born with a size advantage.

I do understand some frustration with the conversation from Perk’s side, because it does feel like it’s discrediting Brunson’s terrific start to the season and what he can do as a player. That said, the truth of the matter is, as Hammon accurately notes, there are only a handful of players in the league that actually are proven as 1A guys on a championship team and almost none of them are small (with Steph as an exception, but even he isn’t even that small). Maybe Brunson and the Knicks can shock everyone and prove Hammon wrong, but that’ll be a tall order (pun intended).