The NBA Finals MVP said he's got small screen dreams after taking the title
Credit: Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty; Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Jalen Brunson has big plans after winning the NBA title
- The New York Knicks star told reporters he was going to “try to get on SVU“
- Brunson is famously close with the show’s star, Mariska Hargitay
Jalen Brunson has big plans now that the New York Knicks have won a championship.
"Try to get on SVU,” the NBA Finals MVP told reporters, after he was asked what was next following the Knicks’ title-clinching win in Game 5 on Saturday, June 13.
After the game, Brunson, 29, hugged many people — his wife Ali, father Rick, sister Erica and mom Sandra — but with the game in San Antonio, he didn't get a chance to embrace one of his celebrity friends: Law & Order star Mariska Hargitay.
The star guard revealed that he exchanged texts with the actress after Game 1, and has spoken in the past about his special relationship with Hargitay.
In a guest spot on the Roommates Show with Jalen Brunson & Josh Hart last year, Knicks fan Ben Stiller got the scoop about the NBA star’s relationship with Hargitay.
"Try to get on SVU"
–– Jalen Brunson on what's next pic.twitter.com/z7CVdPCPVK
— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) June 14, 2026
"I just remember my dad always watching the show," Brunson, who also then began watching the procedural, told Stiller.
He added about eventually meeting Hargitay: "I've never been like super super like starstruck — super starstruck. "I saw her, I was like 'Oh s—.' The first time we met, it was awesome. We talked and everything."
Hargitay herself had high praise for the point guard last week, while on the Today show. In preparing for her Broadway show, Every Brilliant Thing, the actress said Brunson has been inspirational.
Credit: Michael Simon/Shutterstock
"I just thought about him and his inspiration and his humility and his work ethic, to say, 'You can do hard things. No matter what you can do hard things,' " she said, adding, "I love him."
She added, "He is so singular, and magnificent. He is a magnificent human.”
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Brunson won two national championships as a player at Villanova, but an NBA title had proved elusive over his eight seasons in the league.
Amid ongoing discourse about his height and impact, he proved seemingly every critic wrong with his play in the Finals, which culminated in a 45-point effort on Saturday, in which he was responsible for almost half of his team’s points.
For Brunson, winning has been the focus since he arrived in New York.
“It's been amazing,” Brunson told PEOPLE in January 2024, roughly two years after coming to the Knicks as a free agent by way of the Dallas Mavericks. “It's being a part of this organization, the city being close to where I was born and where I grew up, it's pretty special just knowing that my dad at one point played for this organization, and it brings back a lot of the memories from when I was younger.”
He added, “It's been a perfect situation and I just love being here and I love the opportunity that's been given to me, and I just love being able to go out there and try and help a team win.”
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