Ex-Villanova HC Jay Wright on Jalen Brunson’s Relentless Drive for Greatness

Jay Wright coached Jalen Brunson for three years at Villanova, and the thing he keeps coming back to isn't the talent. It's the mind.

Asked about a soundbite on having no fear of failure, Wright said it captures exactly how Brunson has approached every day, every game, every possession his entire career. Miss a shot that might have cost the team the game, and the next one comes with a clear mind. He trusts his work. If it goes in, it goes in. If it doesn't, he learns from it and gets back to work.

That came from home, from Rick Brunson and Jalen's mother Sandra. Wright told a recruiting story he still marvels at. On the home visit, Brunson's mother offered to show him the bedroom, which made Wright uneasy until he saw why. The walls were covered in motivational quotes, and she'd posted the headlines from the last game they lost, swapping them out every few days. Everything was about growing, getting better, staying positive. Wright had seen Brunson fail in the toughest environments as a high schooler, a U19 player, and a college player, and there was never any difference in how he came back.

At Villanova, the early lesson was about role. Brunson arrived in 2016 as a scorer, but Wright deliberately roomed him with senior point guard Ryan Arcidiacono, who took him under his wing while they battled daily in practice. The message was that Brunson had to do whatever the team needed in a given game, whether that meant top scorer, top assist man, or guarding the other team's best guard. He was open to all of it.

The maturity showed in a meeting after Brunson's sophomore year. Wright thought he was ready for the NBA and said so to his parents. His mother answered that he wasn't going anywhere without his degree. His father added that he wasn't good enough defensively yet. Wright, thrilled, happily took him back for another year, and Brunson won another championship and earned the degree.

The texting never stopped, even into the pros. Wright recalled one playoff game when Brunson hit him first to say, in unprintable terms, that he'd played badly, then immediately added, "I have to figure this out." Wright pointed to the game five sequence against the Spurs when Brunson drove on Victor Wembanyama, hesitated, bumped him with his shoulder as Wembanyama rose to block, and finished at the rim with his off hand. Watching it, Wright knew Brunson had it solved for the rest of the series. That's what he does at every level: study how he's being played and use it to dominate.

Wright also pushed back on the old scouting reports. He believed Brunson's situation in Dallas, running the point alongside Luka Dončić, proved everything. Brunson's basketball IQ let him control the offense, feed Dončić when needed, and take over when Dončić went down. Scouts saw a career backup. Wright told them this guy could lead a team to a championship. He never claimed Brunson would be Jordan or Kobe, but scoring 45 against a defense as good as San Antonio's, a unit built specifically to shut him down, is, as Wright put it, just amazing at the highest level of basketball.