How Knicks Star Jalen Brunson Found His MVP in High School Sweetheart Ali Brunson

Generally speaking, when New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson shoots his shot, he does not miss. 

But when a basketball teammate introduced the 29-year-old to now-wife Ali Marks Brunson his freshman year at Illinois’ Adlai E. Stevenson High School, “She’s like, ‘Oh, you’re on JV,” he lamented during a December episode of Roommates Show, the podcast he hosts with teammate Josh Hart and businessman pal Matt Hillman.

When the future second round NBA draft pick gently corrected her, he continued, “She was like, ‘Oh, OK,’ and kind of, like, dismissed me and then, yeah, walked away for, like, two years.” 

It’s not as if they never huddled up. “We were friends for a couple years,” stressed his bride, who earned her doctorate in physical therapy in 2021, “and then our senior year we started dating.” 

But as she was bound for the University of Illinois and he was destined to score two national championships at Philadelphia’s Villanova University, “I didn’t want to date,” Ali acknowledged of her ambivalence before their relationship tipped off in 2013. “Long distance is hard.”