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SALT LAKE CITY — Jalen Brunson made himself a lot of money.
In a league dominant by big names, Brunson's name is not one of them. Which is why what he did to the Utah Jazz Monday night was something to behold and only added to his credibility in the league.
The Dallas Mavericks guard, who has been in the league for four seasons after being drafted in the second round of the 2018 NBA draft, had a career night as he led the home team to a 110-104 win over the Jazz to even up the series 1-1 in the first-round playoff matchup.
The former three-year Villanova star finished with a game-high 41 points and the spotlight squarely on him. And to make the situation even better, he didn't have a turnover, either. That puts him in rarefied air as the only Mavericks player to score 40 points and no turnovers in a game.
Luka Doncic who?
With Doncic sidelined due to a left calf injury for the second-straight game, the Mavericks needed someone to step up if the team hoped to avoid a 2-0 deficit in the first-round series against the Jazz. And Brunson was more than ready to accept the task.
"He didn't wait," Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd said. "He took up the space and he was aggressive from the jump ball. We talked about it earlier: don't wait, get to your spot and do what you do best. And I thought he ran the team extremely well; he found spots to score and he made plays."
Brunson opened up the first quarter making all five of his first five shots to score 11 of the team's first 14 points. He was aggressive and attacked the rim, and finished with 15 of the team's 24 points in the quarter. The Jazz locked him down better in the second quarter and only allowed him to score 6 more points, but it wouldn't last long.
In the second half, Brunson went to work again and scored an additional 20 points. But the points were just the most visible aspect to his game Monday night. Brunson finished with eight rebounds and five assists as he orchestrated an efficient night for the Mavericks, who only had three turnovers on the night.
As the Jazz were forced to deal with the scoring onslaught of Brunson, it opened up looks from the rest of his team — none more than Maxi Kleber. As Brunson or Spencer Dinwiddie cut to the basket, Kleber sat patiently in the corner. Kleber only averages 7.0 points per game, so the Jazz were willing to accept the odds that he'd miss a shot or two.
Per @ESPNStatsInfo, the Mavs made 17 uncontested 3s in win over Jazz, the most by any team in last 10 postseasons. That includes seven of Maxi Kleber's eight 3s.
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) April 19, 2022
Maybe some of Brunson's magic rubbed off on Kleber because the forward from Germany couldn't miss. He finished with a game-defining 25 points, including eight made 3-pointers on 11 attempts, to push a late Mavericks lead out of reach for the Jazz.
"It just creates space," Kidd said of Kleber's shot making. "it just helps everyone on the floor, and he was huge for us tonight."
The Mavericks beat the Jazz at their own game with 22 made 3-pointers on 47 attempts. At that point, it didn't even matter that the Jazz outrebounded the Mavericks 50-31 — the second-straight game with a 19-rebound deficit. But with 3-pointers raining down from anywhere the Mavericks wanted, the rebounds were of littler concern in the end.
Brunson had stolen the night, as had Kleber, and it meant a big win as the series shifts to Salt Lake City.
When asked by a media member after the game what the stat sheet showed to Brunson, he gave a simple reply: "Bunch of numbers."
"Dollar signs?" the reporter retorted.
"No, just a bunch of numbers," Brunson said with a slight chuckle.
He'd done the work, but at the end of the day, it was just a bunch of numbers — a bunch of numbers that willed the Mavericks to a win with their best player sitting courtside as he recovered from an injury. It also meant a likely significant pay raise for the guard.
"A lot. He's going to make a lot of money," Kidd said. "I don't know if he needs an agent — I'm going to put my name in the hat. But it's not just what he did tonight and it's not what he's going to do going forward, he's already done the work this season. He's shown that he deserves to be paid. He does his job at a very high level, and he's a winner."
Brunson is the 14th highest paid player on the current roster, but none of that is his concern as of the moment. He's got a series to win.
"I'm already trying to forget about it," he said. "It's great, but we've got a long way to go. This is a great win for us — something we can build off of — but we have a lot of room for improvement, things we can improve, clean up and things we can get better. We've just got to stay the course.
"Obviously, the ball was going in for me, but I wouldn't be able to do that without my teammates; they gave me a lot of confidence, and it's a credit to them and the coaching staff. As a team, we kept fighting and stuck together. Whenever they made runs, we just stayed together, we just kept our focus."
