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Jalen Brunson is leading the New York Knicks in playoff scoring and assists heading into the NBA Finals June 3 versus the San Antonio Spurs.
But it’s the depth chart at home that really motivates the 29-year-old these days.
“I want to say goodnight to my daughter,” Jalen told Yahoo Sports in February. “I cherish those moments.”
The Villanova grad, who’s hoping to lead the Knicks to their first championship since 1973, is dad to 22-month-old Jordyn with wife Ali Marks. And though he didn’t get to where he is without prioritizing basketball, having the AMB Method founder on his team since their days at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois—he proposed in the gym after being inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2022—gave the 6-foot-2 guard extra lift.
“She’s always been by my side,” Jalen told People when they tied the knot in July 2023, “and I’m lucky to have her.”
Jalen “has always been incredibly serious about being a basketball player,” Ali told People in February. “But then he’s always been his goofy self, and so that has not changed at all. It’s been, honestly, an amazing experience because he has always been true to us and to himself. He has just exploded in New York, but it has not changed who he is.”
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And though Jalen told Vanity Fair that he usually makes sure he’s “not doing too much” on his days off, double dates with fellow Knicks guard Josh Hart and his wife Shannon Phillips aren’t out of bounds.
“Our wives will be like, ‘You guys just saw each other,'” Jalen said. “And we’re like, ‘Yeah. And?'”
Josh and Shannon, who’s now a nurse, were also teen sweethearts, their romance blossoming in their hometown of Silver Spring, Md. She played soccer at University of Miami, Baltimore County, while he hooped for Villanova in Pennsylvania.
But Josh, 31, knew she was the one when he caught her reaction to his ejection from a game in 2018.
“I think she just texted me ‘Woosah’ or something like that,” he told the New York Times in October. “I just started laughing. And I was like, OK, this is my person. Even when I’m as mad as I am right now, it still calmed me down.”
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They tied the knot in August 2021 and share 3-year-old twin sons, Hendrix Aaron and Haze Dana.
“The same intensity he has on the court, he brings right home,” Shannon told the Times. “He’s very supportive of everything I do: nursing school, sports, kids, pregnancy.”
Or, as Josh put it, “If she likes it, I love it.”
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Providing key assists to Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns‘, meanwhile, is his future bride Jordyn Woods, who said yes to the 30-year-old center’s proposal on Christmas Day after five years of dating.
They had known each other for a few years as friends before hard-launching their relationship in September 2020, five months after Karl-Anthony’s mother died of COVID-19 complications.
He leaned on Jordyn during that time, he said on her Instagram series Regular-ish in 2021, “because she’s one of those only people who actually knew how I was feeling and what I was going through.”
Added Jordyn, “I think it’s kind of cool dating your best friend. We know each other. We know each other’s hearts.”
And these Knicks standouts aren’t the only basketball players who’ve found a winning partnership. Read on for more stats about your favorite NBA stars’ love lives:
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