Jalen Brunson Breakdown

Jalen Brunson is excelling in the NBA playoffs due to his skill and craftiness. He uses specific footwork to read the floor and make better decisions. Brunson is effective at getting his back to the basket and uses various moves like half-spins and forward pivots to create space for his shots. He lifts the ball on the right side of his body to create shooting space. Brunson also utilizes fadeaways and maintains balance by landing on one foot. He attacks open spaces and finishes quickly at the rim. He is difficult to guard due to his strength and ability to create space. Today I'm going to be going over how Jalen Brunson is so good and why he's literally taking over these NBA playoffs. A lot of people say he makes up for his height with his skill and craft, but what skills does he implement? What helps make him so crafty? These are some of the questions I'm going to be trying to answer, breaking down his Game 1 footage against the Indiana Pacers when he happened to drop 43 points. And hopefully I can provide something for aspiring hoopers to implement into their games. So right away, first play, you'll see Brunson get into these skips where he's hopping off the floor with that inside foot. And this is essentially allowing him to read the floor or re-transition into another set of footwork. But he, like a lot of other good guards, uses this set of footwork a lot just to read the floor, make decisions better, give himself time to pause, and then go from there. And you'll see Brunson's so effective at getting his back to the basket. Here he goes into a half-spin, where he lifts off his inside foot, transitions into an inverted open drop, then gets into a forward pivot spin. So his right foot is going to spin forward, just like a pivot. And this would be a spin because he's taking up space in the direction that he's driving with that right foot. Now he's going to hop off his inside foot and land on both feet. This essentially allows him to pivot in either direction. And here, this is critical, you'll see Brunson drop his right foot, almost in a seal type of action, to threaten turning his right shoulder. And Nembhard has to respect that, so he's going to shift over. And this gives Brunson the space he needs to forward pivot into his fadeaway. And you'll see something interesting here, that Brunson uses a lot to get his shots off. He'll lift the ball up the right side of his body, even though he's a lefty. As you see, Nembhard will try to contest his shooting hand, which is his left hand. So Brunson brings it up the right side of his body, in order to create space for the shot. And you'll see here again, Brunson gets into the same type of action, backing down Nembhard, until he gets into that seal type action, drops his right foot, threatens the drop step, which he kind of has an angle there, so Nembhard kind of has to jump to that side of his body. And again, this allows Brunson to forward pivot with his right foot, get into that stop, fade stop, so he can fade away, and ends up shooting this off with one foot, like a dirt type fade, to get it over Nembhard. Okay, so this is for the first clip. But what I really want you to see here is how Brunson fades. So you'll see he kicks out his left leg, this isn't really to draw a foul, this is so he can maintain balance. And as he lands, he's going to land on one foot, followed by the other. You'll see this often happens naturally, when players fade away backwards for their shots. And this kind of allows them to fade away smoothly and naturally to get off their shot. So you're going to see Brunson on the right side of the floor again here. He's going to skip again off that inside foot, kind of rotates his left hip to square up with his defender in the middle of the floor. And you'll see that the Knicks kind of have action going on on the other side of the floor. And when Brunson sees his space to the right, he's going to immediately attack the open space, gets the blow-by, gets all the way to the rim. And another thing here, you'll see he jumps off his first step, finishes with the inside hand. This isn't necessarily to mistime Neesmith as much as it is, this is the quickest way to get the shot off. And he's trying to quickly get to the basket before the help side comes. And maybe catch Neesmith off guard a little bit. Now you'll see Brunson has Nembhard in isolation, he's going to hit him with a quick side jab to the left. And you'll see him dribble on this outside foot right here. Kind of a drag stop, his inside foot slides up though. We call this a touch replacement, and he slide steps away from Nembhard. He loves these step backs going to the right, or if he's in the post, turning his left shoulder and fading to the right for a shot. And that's what makes, he can make these tough shots so easily, he makes it look so easy. And that's what makes him so tough to guard, along with him being so strong, that he can always bump you, see his little shove right here. He can always bump you to create space, and he can dictate where he's going to be going. And this just makes him incredibly tough to guard. For anyone, defenders bigger than him, defenders his size, it doesn't matter, he's going to get a bucket.