Jalen Brunson on showing respect, hard lessons from dad and not losing his cool

Jalen and Rick Brunson's emotional, joyous embrace on Saturday night after the New York Knicks clinched their first NBA Championship in 53 years was about so much more than basketball.

But his dad was actually the second person Jalen acknowledged after the win.

"I hugged Coach (Mitch) Johnson from the Spurs first, just to show respect," Brunson told "CBS Mornings" on Wednesday.

"It was just kind of instinct, like it's kind of how I was raised," Brunson said.

"I think win or loss, you always gotta show respect regardless of the outcome, and I got a lot of respect for them over there," he added, referring to San Antonio, who, despite losing in the Finals 4-1, finished the regular season with the second-best record in the NBA.

"And once I saw him, it was emotional from that point on," Jalen said of his father. "It was a crazy moment."

Rick has been an assistant coach for the Knicks since 2022, one month before Jalen joined the team. But he was also a member of their 1999 Eastern Conference championship team as a player.

Some of the emotion comes from thinking about "the beginning," Jalen said.

"Everyone sees the videos of me and him in the park, and like, yelling at me, getting on me, but no one saw the conversations after the fact or before, saying, you know, 'Is this what you want to do for a living?'"

"Everyone thinks he kind of forced basketball upon me, but it was something that I chose to do, and he had the study guide, he had the blueprint," Jalen said.

"I just believe basketball kind of parallels to life, you know, just working hard on the court, building habits. How you are raised and things you do, kind of parallel to life," Rick said.

"We worked every day. The credit goes to him, I just did all the yelling," he added as his son cracked a small smile.

"It was really simple, but it was a choice that you had to make. Is this something you actually want to do? But it made the choice easy," Jalen said. "All the things they sacrificed for me, they understood how much I loved the game. It was easy from that point on."

The Finals MVP initially said his leadership style came from his mother, Sandra, but quickly conceded it came from both his parents.

"I feel like they did a good job of kind of piggybacking off of each other," he said. "I didn't know the conversations that they had behind the scenes, about how they can still kind of love me and still push me at the same time, by still being hard on me."

Recalling a controversial non-call when the Spurs' Victor Wembanyama shoved him in Game 3 of the Finals and how he maintained his composure,