Jalen Brunson’s early effect on Knicks feels awfully familiar

Maybe you had to be there — and the odds are, you were not.

This was late October, early November 2001, and Greater New York’s attention was, to say it mildly, divided. Lower Manhattan was still a sad, solemn and smoldering catastrophe. Whatever attention could be paid to sports was mostly fixed on the Yankees, in their final dynasty days.

Over in North Jersey, at old Continental Airlines Arena, it was easy to overlook the basketball revolution taking place. Folks were skeptical to begin with; they were the Jersey Nets, after all, a real-time basketball freak show for decades.

The Nets had always struggled with attendance at the Meadowlands, but now they were owned by the YankeeNets conglomerate and they were operated by Lou Lamoriello at the top, and so the days of padding attendance figures was over. And the truth, told in those numbers, was stark:

There were 8,749 for the opener against the Pacers; 6,532 for the Hornets; 5,277 for the Sonics; 5,631 for the Cavaliers. It was friends-and-family only, and it was a shame. Because what was happening on the court night after night was breathtaking and it was exhilarating: the Nets were playing a different kind of ball, running and passing and defending. And winning, night after night.

And that could all be credited to one person: Jason Kidd.

Kidd had been acquired on draft night back in June, essentially swapped for Stephon Marbury, and it had barely caused a stir. Part of that was the Nets and their confirmed second-class status in a busy sports town. Part of it was that Kidd was viewed as damaged goods. He’d had run-ins with coaches and teammates. He had been arrested for a domestic violence incident. He had played well for the Suns, but it felt in realtime like another Nets transaction that would soon prove to be fool’s gold.

Except it was anything but.

“Jason,” says Rod Thorn, the man who made the trade for the Nets, “changed everything about the franchise. The professionalism. The expectations. The results. Everything.”

It may well have been the most remarkable single-season, single-player transformation we’ve ever seen in New York. Overnight, the Nets were a must-see. And when they finally drew a respectable crowd of 15,639 for a game against the Knicks in their eighth game of the year, they rolled to a 109-83 throttling.

At halftime, they led 59-36 and noted Knicks fan Spike Lee, talking to a small group of reporters, said with more than a trace of crosstown envy: “That’s the most amazing basketball show I’ve seen in years.”

OK.

We’re not going to say that Jalen Brunson’s arrival with the Knicks 21 years later is a carbon copy of what Kidd did for the Nets. Certainly not yet. The game was different then, the East was different. But in one season Kidd not only made the Nets watchable, he made them terrific: they won 52 games and then beat the Pacers, Hornets and Celtics to make the NBA Finals before they finally were steamrolled by the Kobe/Shaq Lakers.

Kidd was good for 14.7 points and 9.9 assists per night, and seemed to make every big shot in the playoffs. He finished second to Tim Duncan for MVP but had a hell of a case to win it.

Brunson, who was coached by Kidd last season with the Mavericks, had played three games for the Knicks before Wednesday night’s date with the Hornets at the Garden.

But forget for a moment what those 2001 Nets became. The relevant comparison is what they were at the start: ignored, overlooked, with precious few expectations attached. Yet from Day 1, Game 1, Kidd announced with his play that things were different. On Day 1, Game 1, Kidd was 14 points/10 rebounds/nine assists against Indiana and he pushed the ball every second he was on the floor, feeding Kerry Kittles, feeding Keith Van Horn, feeding Kenyon Martin, feeding a kid rookie, Richard Jefferson.

“Most fun I ever had playing basketball,” Kittles told me last year, and it was maybe the most fun Greater New York has had watching basketball since the ’70s Knicks grew old and gray. Before you could get excited about results, Kidd and friends allowed you to get excited about simply watching a beautiful game played beautifully.

Again: it’s only three games. But what Brunson has brought to the Knicks so far — feeding Julius Randle, feeding RJ Barrett, feeding Mitch Robinson, feeding himself — feels awfully familiar, especially if you were there back in the fall of 2001, if you saw it with your own eyes. Which, odds are, you did not.