'It'll be Fun!": Mavericks Eagerly Await Knicks' Visit as Brunson, Randle Return

Time will tell if Jalen Brunson partakes, but the Dallas Mavericks can't wait to greet their former teammate when the New York Knicks visit on Tuesday.

As any football fan will tell you, relations between New York and Dallas are rarely friendly. Relations, however, appear to be different on the hardwood. 

The New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks will wrap up their annual pair on Tuesday night in North Texas (8:30 p.m. ET, MSG/NBA TV). While the hullaballoo around Jalen Brunson's first meeting with his former team was partly handled when the teams met at Madison Square Garden just over three weeks ago, Tuesday will mark the first time he partakes in a game at Dallas' American Airlines Center in another uniform.

Brunson, of course, is the Knicks' $104 million man after inking a four-year metropolitan contract over the summer. The trip east followed four seasons with the Mavericks, who chose him with the 33rd pick of the 2018 NBA Draft. He arrived in Dallas 30 picks after the Mavericks chose current franchise face Luka Dončić with one of the premier picks. 

He has lived up to the hype so far and has probably developed a legitimate case for his first All-Star Game appearance. Alas, his status is relatively uncertain for his homecoming: Brunson's left Sunday afternoon's game against the Philadelphia 76ers with an apparent hip injury and is listed as questionable on the injury report for the Dallas visit.

Even if Brunson doesn't play, his former teammates are looking forward to seeing him.

“It’s going to be great,” Dončić told the Mavericks' official team site. “JB is our guy. It’s going to be fun and great to see him again.”

Even if Brunson doesn't play on Tuesday, the affair will nonetheless serve as a homecoming (ironic for a game involving a team that formerly played at Dallas' Reunion Arena). Not only do several former Knicks reside on the Mavericks' roster (one of whom came up particularly big in the Dec. 3 meeting), but Brunson's fellow New York headliner Julius Randle was born in Dallas and went to high school in nearby Plano.

Making the timing of this matchup all the more ironic is the fact that the Knicks were recently charged a small price for acquiring Brunson's services: an NBA investigation determined that the Knicks tampered with his pending free agency over the summer and rescinded the team's regularly scheduled second-round pick in the 2024 draft as a result.

Brunson has played in all 34 Knicks games this year, as has Randle. The latter, who still makes his home in the Dallas area during the offseason, tallied 26 points in the Knicks' last visit to the AAC in March, a 107-77 New York victory.

"Anytime I play in front of family, I always want to give them a good little show," Randle told the New York Post at the time. "I enjoy coming home, sleeping in my own bed that’s not New York.’’

As the Association has passed the Christmas landmark on the schedule, the Knicks and Mavericks enter with similar yet very different 18-16 records. Some assumed the Knicks would hover around this point, but the team looked particularly formidable during an eight-game winning streak that began immediately after Dallas' visit. Brunson and Randle were major sparks behind that fire but Sunday's holiday heartbreaker against Philadelphia has doomed New York to three losses in a row. 

Dallas, the Knicks' fellow Christmas combatants, has conversely won three in a row, the latest triumph being a come-from-behind victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday. It has allowed the team to find some form of stability after a shaky start: the Mavericks are 8-6 overall since a shocking overtime loss to lowly Detroit on Dec. 1 dropped them a game below .500. 

"We know we got a tough Knicks’ squad coming in," Tim Hardaway Jr. said of the challenge ahead. "With JB coming back and Randle coming back home, we got to be ready to fight on both ends of the floor.”

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Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags

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