Jalen Brunson had a night for the ages. He scored 45 points to lead the New York Knicks to their first NBA title in 53 years and was named MVP of the finals. This capped off a great four-year run with the Knicks, where he averaged 26.9 points a game and was named to the All-NBA second team three times.
But Brunson refuses to call himself a star. Why?
Let’s take a step back to when Brunson arrived at Villanova as a star high school recruit from Illinois, but he was not guaranteed any playing time by coach Jay Wright. The team already had proven guards who were returning from the previous season, and Brunson would not likely get many minutes of playing time.
Brunson responded by doing what he always did. He went to work. His dad, Rick Brunson, a former NBA player, would put Jalen through a second workout after every practice. The Brunson work ethic paid off, and Jalen became a freshman starter at Villanova, and he ended up leading the Wildcats to two national championships during his college career.
Next stop, the NBA. With Brunson’s resume, he should have been a top-ten NBA draft pick, but he slipped to the second round. In a league where height and wingspan are highly prized, the 6’2” Brunson was considered way too small to be an effective player.
For Brunson, the underdog narrative was born – and he has stubbornly stuck to it throughout his NBA career. The Athletic reported on an exchange Brunson had with a reporter during the Knicks playoff series with the Philadelphia 76ers, where he stated, “I’m not a star.”
Jalen Brunson is clearly a star, but he has created a personal narrative for himself that avoids acknowledging that and instead emphasizes a status where he is a perennial underdog. “I used that second-round name,” explained Brunson.
It turns out that creating an underdog narrative can be a very powerful thing. The Athletic cited a study by University of Pennsylvania assistant professor Samir Nurmohamed that provided evidence that viewing yourself as an underdog could lead to higher motivation and a stronger work ethic.
Previous research had shown that being discriminated against often led to poorer performance because being told you weren’t good enough created a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. In Nurmohamed’s research, the idea was to see if you could counteract negative workplace prejudices by providing participants with a story that told them they were an underdog but had what it took to succeed. The group who were assigned this personal narrative had better outcomes in finding a new job.
Self-talk is a powerful thing! The Athletic quoted sports performance coach Justin Su’a as saying, “The best athletes, executives and coaches I’ve ever worked with are master storytellers. They have learned how to purposely engineer their self-talk to get them to the feeling — the ideal state — that they need to be the best versions of themselves.”
What is the story you tell yourself? Make it a good one because it can help create the framework for the success that you desire!
