After the Knicks wrapped up their second consecutive sweep and their 11th straight playoff victory, Brunson was named the Most Valuable Player of the Eastern Conference finals in a unanimous vote, after averaging 25.5 points and 7.8 assists in 39.6 minutes per game, shooting 48.6% from the floor in the series. (Full disclosure: I was one of the voters.)

“What a wild surprise,” a smiling Karl-Anthony Towns joked during his postgame press conference. (For what it’s worth, Towns — who averaged 15.8 points on 54/50/83 shooting splits to go with 12.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.3 blocks per game, and finished a series-high plus-79 — had a pretty good case, too.)

Another real shocker: Upon receiving the honor, Brunson immediately deflected credit away from himself and toward his teammates.

“It means a lot, but I wouldn’t be here without my teammates,” Brunson told ESPN’s Lisa Salters during the on-court presentation. “The belief they had in me — this coaching staff, this organization, this fanbase — I mean, without them, none of this is possible. [...] They give me confidence. They let me be me. I think most importantly, we all believe in each other, from top to bottom. It’s an honor to play with them, honestly.”

Eurostepping praise in favor of kicking out to teammates has become par for the course for Brunson. That trickles down, too.

“The character of those guys, the character of the guys in the locker room — we don't really care who gets the shine, the shots, the minutes, those kind of things,” Knicks forward Josh Hart said after Game 2. “We're focused on winning. And I think everyone is willing to sacrifice their own personal agendas or performance for the betterment of the team. And when you have a group of guys that do that, you know, sky's the limit.”

Those guys are in the locker room because they fit around Brunson — on the court and off the court. They augment the strength in his game and fill in its gaps. They cover for him defensively when he needs it and give him the room he needs to make magic offensively. They capitalize on the attention he demands, knock down the shots he generates, and make the most out of the space he creates. He credits them; they revolve around him.

Brunson isn’t the longest-tenured Knick; that’d be reserve center Mitchell Robinson, drafted by the team in the second round 2018. He’s the centerpiece of it all, though — the alpha and omega, the prime mover behind the franchise’s monumental climb from the depths of despair for much of the 2000s. It’s taken an awful lot to get the Knicks back to the NBA Finals, and damn near all of it starts with team president Leon Rose signing Brunson — his former client, later his son Sam’s client, and the son of his first client, former Knicks player and current Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson — in unrestricted free agency in 2022.

Brunson immediately proved ready for full-time, prime-time work as the No. 1 ball-handler and at least co-No.-1 scoring option on a good team, partnering with Julius Randle and RJ Barrett to propel the Knicks to 47 wins and the franchise’s first playoff series win in eight years. He leveled up to superstardom the next season, earning his first All-Star and All-NBA berths and finishing fifth in MVP voting.

After dramatically outperforming his initial four-year, $106 million contract, Brunson reaffirmed his intentions to be a partner in driving winning in New York by inking a four-year, $156.5 million contract extension in the summer of 2024 — a deal that technically paid him the maximum amount he could earn at that exact moment, but also one that came in a cool $113 million under the max he could’ve commanded had he waited until the following summer. By locking the deal down then, though, Brunson created the financial conditions that enabled the Knicks to pony up to retain OG Anunoby when he hit free agency, to bring in and later extend another college buddy in Mikal Bridges, and to fit in the supermax salary of All-NBA stretch-big Towns — all without going over the second apron.

The way Brunson saw it, he didn’t give back money; he bought something. He’d become the cornerstone on which the Knicks franchise was built — the reason to go out and get old college buddies Hart and Donte DiVincenzo, to swing a monster trade for Anunoby, to go all in for KAT, to fork over a half-decade’s worth of draft capital for Bridges.

“There’s no other player, no other guard that I wanna be alongside besides JB,” said Bridges, who struggled with his shot in Game 4, but whose re-emergence as one of the best two-way wings in the sport over the past two rounds has helped fuel this historic New York run.

Under Rose’s leadership, the Knicks had operated patiently, stacking assets, deftly manipulating the salary cap and winning as many deals on as many margins as they could. Brunson’s ascent to greatness, though, demanded serious efforts to surround him with a team worthy of his talents — to build a championship-caliber roster for him to lead.

“The belief that the organization has in me has been amazing, and it's something I don't take for granted, and it's something that … not a lot of people get the opportunity,” Brunson said after Game 4, as he shared the podium with Hart and Bridges, once again hoisting a trophy, all these years removed from Villanova. “So I'm very thankful. It's an honor to be here in the city, and for this organization and with my teammates. Yeah, obviously these guys got my back, and they've always had it. Wouldn't trade it for the world.”

Rose built the roster, rounding out the rotation with ace two-way guards Miles McBride and Landry Shamet, who had a heater for the ages in the conference finals, going 11-for-12 from 3-point range in what must have felt like an out-of-body experience. When the comparatively rigid Knicks ran aground against the fluid, freewheeling and adaptable Indiana Pacers in last year’s Eastern Conference finals, Rose moved on from successful head coach Tom Thibodeau and brought in Mike Brown — who promptly set about turning New York into the kind of fluid, freewheeling and adaptable two-way monster that could hammer teams like the Hawks, Sixers and Cavaliers into essentially giving up on their home courts.

Brown’s been on NBA benches for nearly 30 years, working for the likes of Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Rick Carlisle, and coaching some of the greatest players in the history of basketball. And he can’t stop raving about the way Brunson leads, about how hard Brunson works.

“You know, most superstars I've been around work extremely hard,” Brown said Monday. “But his work ethic, man … it's off the charts. Like, we have shootaround usually at 10 a.m. And he goes, whether we're at home or on the road, every freaking day. And I'm a late-night guy, and I had to adjust. Because he makes me tired, because I got to get up now at 7:30 and meet with my coaches, because we're having an early shootaround. And not most of the time. Every time. His work ethic is second to none.

“On top of that, you know, he's pretty even-keeled. Never gets too high, never gets too low. And when your leader’s that way — which you need to have, especially when you hit adversity — it’s easy to get everybody else to follow. Because I can be that way. But as a coach, players are gonna tune me out at times. But when it comes from within, it's hard to tune each other out, especially when it comes from your leader or your best player.”

Asked if that temperament and consistency reminded him of anybody he’s been around, Brown had two immediate answers.

“Tim Duncan and Steph Curry,” Brown said. “They're not the same player, but man, you just — the aura that those guys have, the quiet strength that they have, is unbelievable.”

Everything these Knicks are stems from that strength and orbits around that aura; Brunson is the sun at the center of the solar system. The king of New York. The reason they flock — wherever, whenever, against whomever.

You could feel Monday’s result coming from miles away. From about 500 miles away, give or take — the distance between LaGuardia Airport and Cleveland Hopkins International. Knicks fans descended on downtown Cleveland on Saturday, ready to turn Rocket Arena into Madison Square Garden Midwest, and after New York took care of business in Game 3 to put the somnambulant and sputtering Cleveland Cavaliers in the kind of hole from which no NBA team has ever emerged, the visiting faction seemed to expand exponentially by Sunday.

Blue-and-orange jerseys and shirts everywhere you looked as you walked up East 4th Street to the arena. Sinatra belting out “New York, New York” on the jukebox at Harry Buffalo. A bootleg table fresh out of Herald Square selling BIG BODY BRUNSON bucket hats and assorted other Knicks memorabilia, eager to serve the encroaching horde. Can’t knock the hustle.

They travel in droves and pack the streets of Manhattan after every win because they believe in this team, because Rose has built a team worth believing in around a 6-foot-2 second-round pick who’d been stuck playing Robin to a Slovenian Batman. They believe when the home team finally gets out to a hot start for a change, putting the Knicks in an early hole. They believe that, before too long, the dam will break — which, on Monday, came in the form of a 45-15 deluge that turned a one-point Cavs lead midway through the first quarter into a 29-point Cavs deficit midway through the second.

They believe the Knicks will find a way to make magic, because they’ve got Brunson — the on-court embodiment of the old adage that the magic is in the work.

“He’s a testament of that. He believes in that,” Towns said after the game. “He showcases that every single day to all of us, and drives us all to be better.”

They are better, now — better, statistically, than pretty much any team the postseason has ever seen …

… which is the reason for the elation. For New York legends Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Patrick Ewing handing Brunson his trophy — literalizing the metaphorical passing of the torch from the leaders of the Knicks’ previous greatest generations to the leader of the new school.

“It’s been a long time, carrying on the tradition,” Frazier told reporters on the court. “Passing it down to Jalen. So he’s the guy now that has to carry it.”

At one point, Frazier leaned in and said something to Brunson. What was the message?

“Maestro,” he said. “Keep going.”

It’s the reason Spike Lee was giddily chatting with members of the Knicks beat, holding court on the hardwood. It’s the reason Timothée Chalamet looked happier than any person has ever looked at any point in their lives. It’s why Allan Houston was hugging Karl Towns Sr., and John Starks hugging Landry Shamet, and Rick Brunson was autographing T-shirts, high-fiving fans and friends, joking outside the Knick locker room about how he’s “gotta work another two weeks,” how the vacation trip down to the Jersey Shore will have to wait just a little longer.

It’s why when Jose Alvarado — Brooklyn-born, repping Christ the King, a lifelong Knick-in-waiting who finally got his chance to join the crew at February’s trade deadline — popped out of a Knicks locker room that was blasting Michael Jackson songs, all he could say was, “Wow. That's special.” It’s why, whichever behemoth comes out of the West, the Knicks will enter the Finals believing they’ve got a chance, and a damn good one, at that.

“I feel like the word ‘hope’ has been gone from the New York Knicks for a long time,” Towns said after the game. “And for [us] to be part of this team that revives the word ‘hope’ in the city, it’s something special. It’s something really, really special, and it’s an honor.”

They have hope because they bet on the right horse. The Knicks looked at Jalen Brunson and thought he could be the point guard they’d been seeking for decades. They were right, and they’re back now, fighting for the top spot in the sport, because that’s where Brunson led them.

“It’s something I haven’t really put into perspective and thought about,” Brunson said Monday. “Because, as I said before, we’re still writing our story, [...] but I like the journey that we’re on right now.”

The best part of all? The journey’s not over yet.