December 2023, Becky Hammon goes on ESPN NBA Today and says the quiet part loud: “If your best player is small, you’re not winning.” She named the Knicks. She called Brunson too small. Fine. That’s a take you’re allowed to have.
Then the Knicks went to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999, part of an 11-game playoff run averaging 23.8 points per win, and Hammon was given every opportunity to walk it back.
She did not walk it back.
“I said what I said.”
Look, there’s an honest version of Hammon’s argument. Allen Iverson won the 2001 MVP and got to the Finals — and lost. The 6’0″ Iverson is the one cautionary tale that actually stings, and to her credit, she cited him herself when doubling down on CBS Sports after the Knicks clinched the ECF. The history of small guards falling short in the Finals is real. This is not a completely made-up position.
It is, however, a position that ignores a fairly inconvenient collection of names.
Isiah Thomas — 6’1″, not to be confused with Isaiah Thomas the Celtics guard who is a different human being — won back-to-back championships with the Detroit Pistons in 1989 and 1990, dropped 27.6 points and 7.0 assists per game in the ’90 Finals, and took home Finals MVP. Tony Parker was 6’2″ and won four rings with San Antonio, earning Finals MVP in 2007. And then there’s Stephen Curry — who is also 6’2″ — who won four rings and two MVPs and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport.
Brunson is listed at 6’2″. The EXACT height Hammon flagged.
He went 26.9 PPG, 6.6 APG, 48.6 FG%, and 59.1 TS% through 14 playoff games this year. The 2026 ECF MVP award — the Larry Bird Trophy — was unanimous. Against Cleveland specifically: 25.5 points and 7.8 assists per game on 48.7 shooting in a four-game sweep that wasn’t close for a single quarter.
And he’s doing it against the Spurs Hammon is coaching — the same San Antonio franchise that Tony Parker led to four titles. The 6’2″ Tony Parker. The one that proved the whole premise wrong seventeen years ago.
Isaiah Thomas — the 5’9″ Boston Celtics guard, again a different person — saw the whole thing clearly:
I remember when Coach Becky Hammond went on national TV saying you can’t win with a SMALL guard… Man I don’t like those type of statements smh. Keep doing ya thang Brunson… Us “small” guards all rooting 4 ya #Lefty
— Isaiah Thomas (@isaiahthomas) May 26, 2026
Hammon added, after her “I said what I said” moment, “Oh, you know who I’m cheering for.” The Spurs. She’s rooting against Brunson with the team that Tony Parker built.
Game 1 is June 3. Four wins. That’s all that’s standing between Brunson and the definitive, permanent, unimpeachable answer to this entire conversation.
“If he proves me wrong, he proves me wrong,” Hammon said. She left herself the exit. We’ll see if Jalen Brunson takes it away from her.
