When the New York Knicks signed Jalen Brunson away from Dallas in 2022, the deal already carried an unusual amount of family and front-office history.
Rick Brunson had recently joined the staff, Tom Thibodeau knew the elder Brunson from years earlier, and team president Leon Rose had once been Jalen’s agent. The NBA later ruled the franchise had tampered and took a 2025 second-round pick as punishment.
Brunson then agreed in 2024 to a four-year, $156 million extension that was the most New York could offer at the time, even though waiting another year might have opened a larger payday. Those details were enough to keep the rumor mill spinning.
Investigative journalist Pablo Torre, fresh off his Pulitzer-winning reporting on Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, had already fed the speculation. On “The Dan Patrick Show” a year earlier he said, “My tip line has never been more used by enemies of Jalen Brunson,” adding that callers kept telling him, “Look into that one!”
Asked whether anything was there, Torre answered, “How he arrived on the Knicks, and I will have to defer to the reporting I will or will not do on this, certainly was interesting, right? OK, that’s a pretty good deal for the Knicks.” He called the comment “a little bit of a tease.”
That tease lingered until Torre sat down with Variety and closed the loop.
“I’m getting stopped on the street regularly by people saying, ‘Leave Jalen Brunson alone,’” he said. “It’s been a consistent theme as a New Yorker of people threatening me. Even Rick Brunson reached out to me being like, ‘What are you up to?!’”
Variety then reported the answer to that question: Torre is not “sitting on some investigation” of the Knicks star. So that’s great news for New York.
For a franchise that already paid a modest draft-pick price for talking too early, the distinction matters. Torre’s Clippers work produced a record $30 million fine, five years of first-round picks, and lengthy suspensions for ownership and executives.
Nothing comparable has surfaced around Brunson’s two contracts. The league already punished the original tampering. Torre’s latest comments suggest there is no second, hidden layer of salary-cap circumvention waiting to be unboxed on his podcast.
Knicks fans who spent months bracing for another shoe to drop can treat the Variety interview as a release valve. Brunson remains the face of a title-contending roster, and the journalist who made the rest of the NBA nervous has now said, in public and on the record, that he is not chasing this particular story.
The history of how Brunson got to New York is still unusual. According to Torre, it is not the next scandal.
