The first time Jalen Brunson saw Donte DiVincenzo, his heart sank.
“I guess I’m not going to Villanova,” Brunson said to himself.
There, on his computer screen, Brunson watched a YouTube highlight reel of the best high school player in Delaware, who’d already beaten Brunson to the punch, committing to play for the Wildcats in January of his junior year at Salesianum School in Wilmington.
Later that summer, still undecided, Brunson’s Mac Irvin Fire met DiVincenzo’s Team Final in an AAU Tournament.
The two hit it off. And DiVincenzo decided he’d been deputized by Jay Wright to pitch Brunson.
“Come to Nova with me,” DiVincenzo said.
“Hell, no,” Brunson replied.
Unless you’ve been vacuum-sealed the last year or so, you know that Brunson ultimately changed his mind. He joined DiVincenzo at Villanova, and together they helped hang two national championship banners while their friendship deepened in that way college friendships plant roots unlike any other in your life.
Now they are here, together again, backcourt running partners for the Knicks, still leaning on each other, still trusting each other. Late in a tight game Monday night Brunson was swarmed by a pack of Indiana Pacers. When he saw that, he knew he had one job: “Get the ball to Donte.”
He got the ball to Donte.
Seconds later, DiVincenzo splashed the 3 that put the Knicks up for good and carried them to the end of a 121-117 win. A few seconds after, DiVincenzo added a valedictory to his night by drawing a charge on Myles Turner. You can argue the appropriateness of the call, the timing of it, even technically if it met the criteria of a moving screen.
What can’t be argued is that DiVincenzo made it all possible by playing perfect defense, and putting himself in position to get the call. If he’s even a quarter-step slower, it’s probably a foul on him, and things look a lot different in these Eastern Conference semifinals.
“My focus,” he said, “is trying to make it as difficult as possible.”
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DiVincenzo’s two-way brilliance is what ultimately sealed the deal for the Knicks in Round 1, where he suffocated Tyrese Maxey in Game 6 and also drained five 3s. It was the same drill against the Pacers: five more 3s, remarkable defense, primarily on Tyrese Haliburton.
Here’s the thing: one of the Knicks’ credos since Jan. 27, when Julius Randle was lost for the season, is this: no one player can replace him. It takes everyone doing a little something extra to plug that cavity. That’s mostly been true. But when DiVincenzo steps up as he has the past two games, becoming a legit No. 2 scoring option, and when you factor in his performance on the other end …
Well, the Knicks still miss Randle. And they’re about to relearn how to love life without Mitchell Robinson, felled again by his troublesome ankle and out for the foreseeable future.
But this allows them to miss Randle just a little less.
“I think when you look at his season, he’s had a great year,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “He hit the ground running at the start of the season and then it’s been a steady climb throughout. And then when we lost everybody we needed more from Josh [Hart], Jalen, Donte and he embraced it.”
And while this wasn’t the blueprint at season’s start, where he was pegged to be an off-the-bench, 25- to 30-minute energy guy, that wasn’t necessarily DiVincenzo’s specs.
“I have the most confidence in myself,” he said with a laugh. “Everybody on this team will tell you that.”
Brunson, for one, was unsurprised that his buddy made the most of his moment in the Garden high-beams. It probably tells you something about both players that they really did wind up in Villanova. High school kids usually have fragile egos. DiVincenzo knew having Brunson around was going affect his role; he recruited him anyway. Brunson knew the same; he decided to join up anyway.
“It’s pretty cool seeing a guy who you thought you probably wouldn’t be teammates with, let alone friends with, is now one of your best friends, and he’s hitting clutch shots,” Brunson said. “It’s a real cool sight to see, but knowing him and his mindset, he forgot about it once he woke up.”
Their years at Villanova also laid a foundation for what we’re seeing. Remember, the ’18 champs were essentially a Brunson/Mikal Bridges operation. But it was DiVincenzo who exploded for 31 in the national title game against Michigan. The moment has never been too much for him. Same deal Monday.
“Every shot that goes in at the Garden, there’s nothing like it,” DiVincenzo said. “It feels the same first quarter and the end of the game. They keep it energized throughout the game.”
These Knicks give them reason. Maybe Brunson gives them the most. But Brunson’s old Villanova wingman is always eager to pump up the volume, too.
