A ‘proud’ Jay Wright revels in the success of his former Villanova pupils with the ‘Nova Knicks
Wright, who stayed out of the spotlight during the Knicks’ playoff run, watched his former players win an NBA title in his car from a Radnor cul-de-sac. “It has been a thrill for me,” he said.
Jay and Patty Wright attended a wedding Saturday night in Red Bank, N.J., and Game 5 of the NBA Finals was at halftime when it was time for them to head home.
Watching Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, and Josh Hart is like watching his own children, Wright said, and he wasn’t going to miss this. Patty took the wheel, Jay put the game on his phone in the passenger seat. The game was nearing its end when it was time to exit the Blue Route.
They weren’t going to make it home in time, so the Wrights pulled off the main road and onto a side street. They watched the ‘Nova Knicks win their first NBA title and end a 53-year New York Knicks championship drought in a Radnor cul-de-sac.
Wright intentionally stayed out of the spotlight during the playoff run. He did a spot on ESPN’s Inside the NBA because the guy who asked him to come on was his old producer at Turner Sports and Wright wanted to do him a solid. He reluctantly attended Game 4 because Rick Brunson, Jalen’s father and a Knicks assistant, asked him to. He sat near the court with Patty on one side and Billy Lange — the former St. Joe’s head coach, and former Villanova assistant who is now in the Knicks’ front office — on the other. The epic comeback was followed by singing Frank Sinatra and Jay-Z, hugs with his former players and celebrities like Stephon Marbury and Spike Lee. It was, Wright said, “one of my favorite sports moments of all time.”
But it was maybe fitting that he watched the series end in the car with Patty, just the two of them, proud “parents” watching the guys who played a huge part in delivering the family and the school two NCAA national championships.
“What I enjoy about coaching is just sitting back and watching them all grow and then being a small part of their lives when they make a change or are accomplishing something and they call me or text me to ask me advice or share something with me,” Wright said Monday. “That’s what you love. It just happens to be that these three are doing it on the world stage and you’re watching them handle it with such maturity.
“It’s really heartwarming like if you watch your own kids do it.”
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Wright, 64, is a sort of basketball dad to Brunson, Bridges, and Hart. You don’t need to squint to see the style of play Wright and his coaching staff instilled in the trio during their time at Villanova. The staff would tell them that they would teach the “Villanova way” during their time playing college basketball, and it was up to them to take that to the next level and put their own spin on it.
“You see things that they specifically took from our program,” Wright said. “You see the mentality that they took from our program. You also see what they added themselves to that, their own individualism, their own level of maturity, their own level of knowledge of the NBA game that I don’t have. It was fascinating for me to watch that.”
There was no doubt this trio would end up contributing in the NBA in some capacity. Hart, who graduated from Villanova in 2017, was a first-team All-American. Bridges and Brunson left a year later after another title. Brunson was the player of the year.
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Wright talked to scouts both years. Hart, he told them, would be one of the greatest competitors a team could find. They didn’t need to worry about what position to play him at. Bridges, he said, would be the type of player who was capable of being a leading scorer but had the IQ to understand winning was more important than anything.
He was right about those two evaluations. But Brunson? Wright thought he could be a point guard on a championship team. And that would be fine if he left the evaluation there. He’s right about that. But Wright thought he would need a leading scorer next to him. Dallas, where Brunson played before New York, was the perfect setup, Wright thought. Brunson could be the lead guard, but Luka Dončić was there to provide the bulk of the scoring.
“I didn’t think he would be the guy that would score 45,” Wright said.
Brunson, the Finals MVP, joined Michael Jordan as the only players in NBA history to score 45 in a road clincher. He averaged 11.2 points in the fourth quarters of the five Finals games. He is now in a new stratosphere of fame and is on a Hall of Fame type of path.
All of this has been a unifying moment for the university and for the former teammates of the trio. It was alumni weekend and the school held a watch party on campus Saturday night. Later that night, after the Wrights pulled away from that cul-de-sac and returned to their home, Wright got a text message with a picture. On the court with Bridges was Phil Booth, a former teammate who now works with the Minnesota Timberwolves, and former Villanova walk-ons Matt Kennedy and Tom Leibig.
“Personally, it has been a thrill for me,” Wright said. “I’m proud of all of them.”
