Jalen Brunson tops NBA GM poll as Knicks star trends for odd hat story too

Why Jalen Brunson is trending right now

Two different things have Brunson's name climbing the search bar this week. One is a Fox News/OutKick headline that reads, word for word, "Jalen Brunson is afraid to open the bag containing his NBA championship hat because of horrors inside." That is the extent of what we can confirm from that report. The outlet did not lay out what is actually in the bag, so we are not going to guess at it here.

The bigger, more substantive driver is the NBA's annual general managers' poll, which came out ahead of the Knicks' preseason finale against the Toronto Raptors on Thursday. Brunson was named the league's best leader, and Knicks coach Mike Brown weighed in on why.

What the NBA's general managers actually said

Brunson earned 53% of the vote for best leader in basketball, in a poll where the 30 NBA general managers were not allowed to vote for a player on their own team. That is a jump from last season, when Stephen Curry finished first with 43% and Brunson tied with LeBron James for second. This time around, Curry dropped to 20% and Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander came in at 7%.

Brunson also picked up the second-most votes for best point guard in the league, behind Gilgeous-Alexander, and the second-most votes for the player GMs want taking a shot with the game on the line, behind Curry. On top of that, GMs ranked him the third-most likely player to become a head coach someday, behind Indiana's T.J. McConnell and Boston's Mike Conley.

Mike Brown's take on his point guard

Brown did not sound surprised by any of it. "He studies the game, and that helps a lot because you can always grow in any field you do. But he walks the talk," Brown said ahead of tipoff against the Raptors. He added that Brunson "works extremely hard, and he strives for perfection from himself," and that his teammates see it and hold themselves to it too.

Brown also said leadership requires thick skin, because telling teammates to work harder does not always go over well. "I think Jalen has that thick skin and a toughness about him to be in a seat like this," he said. The Knicks themselves got love in the same poll: 60% of GMs picked them to finish first in the East, 20% gave them the edge for best home-court advantage and 17% called them the league's most efficient offense this coming season. Teammate OG Anunoby also picked up votes, tying for fourth among the league's most versatile defenders.

What we still don't know

The GM poll numbers are on the record and dated. The hat-in-a-bag story is not, at least not from what has been published so far. No outlet detail on what is actually inside, why it unsettled him, or when or if he plans to open it has surfaced in the reporting we have. If more comes out, that is a separate update.

For now, the search spike around Brunson's name looks like two stories running at once, one with real numbers behind it from the people who run NBA front offices, and one with a headline doing most of the work.

Facts per Fox News, New York Daily News. Opinion is the taproom's.