Jalen Brunson Gets Disrespected as ESPN Analyst Calls Him 25th Best Player in NBA

ESPN's own top 10 rankings sparked plenty of backlash just days ago. The network slotted Jalen Brunson at No. 6, behind Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Luka Doncic, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Knicks fans argued that ranking still undersold a player who'd just won Finals MVP, NBA Cup MVP, and Eastern Conference Finals MVP in the same season.

Now, before that debate has even cooled off, one of ESPN's own analytics minds is arguing the network got it backward in the other direction entirely.

ESPN's analytics guru Dean Oliver pushed back hard on Brunson's placement, arguing that the numbers tell a very different story from the panel's eye test.

"He was Finals MVP, but will he really finish the season as the league's sixth-best player?" Oliver wrote. "The metrics place Brunson around the No. 25 range heading into the season. That's not a huge gap. He's elite, just not No. 6 — at least not during the regular season."

Oliver pointed to the same limitations that have followed Brunson for years.

"Brunson has always been limited a bit by his size (6-foot-2, 190 pounds) and his defense, something the metrics perhaps see and remember more than the seven panelists remember the late buckets he poured in to win the Finals," he wrote, adding bluntly that "those problems are likely to persist."

Oliver went further, suggesting the panel's ranking said as much about the market bias as it did about Brunson's actual two-way impact.

"I love Brunson's game, but his lofty ranking benefitted not only from recent bias but also from the New York media bias," he wrote.

He even pointed to a detail from the Finals themselves that criticizes Jalen Brunson as a pure closer:

"That bias might also help you forget that Brunson missed the shot in the most iconic image from the Finals, when OG Anunoby swooped in for the putback game-winner to clinch Game 4."

What made Oliver's take notable wasn't just the gap between No. 6 and No. 25. It was that the disagreement occurred within the same outlet that produced the original ranking.

While the seven-person panel behind ESPN's top 10 leaned heavily on Brunson's postseason résumé and clutch scoring, Oliver's metrics-based view treats defense and physical limitations as far more predictive of a full 82-game season than a handful of playoff fourth quarters.

Oliver was careful not to dismiss Jalen Brunson outright. He called him elite even as he disputed the placement.

But with ESPN publishing both the panel's ranking and its own analyst's challenge to that ranking within the same news cycle, Brunson's case has become a rare instance of a single outlet publicly disagreeing with itself over how to value a reigning Finals MVP.