Jalen Brunson was the Knicks’ captain lengthy earlier than it was official

You earn the all-lowercase model of the phrase earlier than anybody will get round to capitalizing the primary letter. That’s when you realize you could have a real captain. Willis Reed, who in all probability carried the title as effectively and as proudly as any New York athlete ever has, wasn’t formally named Captain of the Knicks till Sept. 21, 1967. 

However he’d been their captain with out debate far longer. 

“Willis was the captain and the chief,” Invoice Bradley as soon as wrote. “The function appeared pure for him and he was revered by everybody. He was all the time the one to talk up when Pink [Holzman] requested if anybody had something so as to add.” 

Or as Clyde Frazier put it as just lately as final winter: “You already know somebody is the captain when you’ll be able to’t think about anybody else in that function moreover him.” 

Humorous, too. Clyde truly was a Knicks captain, his final three years on the Knicks, after Reed’s knees lastly pressured him to retire. And but even Frazier understood: when he was in the identical room with Willis, solely one in all them would ever be referred to as “Captain.” 

Jalen Brunson has been the captain of the Knicks from the second he signed his identify on the backside of his contract 25 months in the past. He’s been their captain within the fitness center — first in, final out — and on the court docket, the place he led them to back-to-back playoff berths for the primary time in 23 years. He’s Tom Thibodeau’s eyes, ears and voice on the court docket. 

“A born chief,” Thibodeau says. 

So there might be a candy formal introduction Thursday afternoon, and Brunson will formally develop into the Knicks’ Captain, capital C, and all you need to do to acknowledge the distinction between captain and Captain is ask your self a easy trivia query: who was the final Knicks captain? 

(I will provide you with a minute to fireplace up the Google machine …) 

Yep. It was Lance Thomas, from 2017 till 2019, a two-year stretch wherein the Knicks went 46-118. All due respect to Thomas, a really good man and a adequate participant to log 9 seasons within the league. But it surely’s onerous to steer from the bench, which is the place Thomas spent most of his 199 energetic video games as captain, averaging a tick over 18 minutes a recreation. 

So it’s Brunson who will put on the captain’s “C”, even when the NBA doesn’t normally slap an precise letter on an precise chest. Hockey does, after all, and that’s one of many sport’s endearing and enduring traditions. In case you squint onerous sufficient, you’ll be able to see a “C” on the helmets of the varied captains within the NFL. Baseball has lengthy shied away from that, a evident exception being the outsized “C” that Keith Hernandez wore his ultimate few years with the Mets. (John Franco had the identical unlucky wardrobe alternative just a few years later).

However Hernandez was like Brunson. He began captaining the Mets the second he landed in Montreal, just a few days after being traded to them from the Cardinals in 1983, and did most of his finest work as a captain earlier than he was named the Mets’ official Captain on Could 6, 1987. 

From 1939 till 1976, the Yankees by no means designated a Captain out of respect to Lou Gehrig, because it was Joe McCarthy’s want that the place be retired together with the person and his No. 4. However George Steinbrenner accurately believed Thurman Munson was the staff’s clear chief by then and sought to have him named Captain.