Being isolated from one’s team for an extended period of time is not necessarily high on any NBA players’ list of recommendations. Just ask Dallas Mavericks’ guard Jalen Brunson.
On Jan. 7, Brunson came off the bench to score seven points and help the Mavs to a 124-117 road victory over the Denver Nuggets in overtime. The next day when the Mavs flew home from Denver, Brunson discovered that he and teammates Dorian Finney-Smith and Josh Richardson all had to remain in Denver due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
Finally, after spending seven days locked up and isolated in his hotel room, on the eighth day – Jan. 15 – Brunson was able to leave Denver and fly back to Dallas. Needless to say, he was happy as a lark to finally be free to play basketball again.
“I got off the plane, stopped home and dropped my bags off, went to the gym and worked out,” Brunson said. “Saturday early, I worked out.
“I was still awaiting the call on possibly playing Sunday (in a Jan. 17 home game against the Chicago Bulls). And obviously finding out that I couldn’t, Sunday I worked out in the morning and then met at the plane (later on Sunday).”
That plane ride took Brunson and the Mavs to Tampa, Fla., where they played the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 18. In his first game after missing five games, Brunson scored 13 points against the Raptors and was 3-of-4 from beyond the 3-point arc.
“For me to be back on the court, it felt great,” Brunson said. “The first couple of minutes were a little tough for me, but once I got running up and down a little bit I felt fine.
“I don’t recommend taking 10 days off and playing a game. But sometimes you got to do what you got to do.”
While quarantined in his Denver hotel room, Brunson had to come up with some things – no matter how mundane — to pass the time away and stay mentally focused.
“Well, first of all thank the Lord for antibodies,” he said. “For me I just limited myself. One of my biggest things is if I’m bored I eat, so I tried not to sit and get bored. I tried to keep my mind off things.
“Obviously, I couldn’t really run. I had a bike in the room, but that only can do so much after the first day. I just tried my best to make sure my mind was straight, keeping it free and staying positive. And I knew as soon as I got off the plane back home, I was right back in the gym to get back in shape real fast.”
Brunson also obviously kept tabs on his teammates so he could stay abreast with what they were doing while he was away.
“I tried to text the guys in a group chat, or individually, whenever I could just to give them my encouragement,” Brunson said. “I talked to the coaches. Coach (Rick) Carlisle text me multiple times.”
Oddly enough, Brunson’s stats in the four games he’s played since returning from the health and safety protocols are better than his overall statistics.
In the 12 games he’s played this season, Brunson is averaging 12.2 points, 2.7 rebounds and 3.6 assists while shooting 50.5 percent from the field and 39.4 percent from behind the 3-point line. And in the four games since returning from his sabbatical in Denver, the third-year veteran is averaging 14.3 points, three rebounds and 3.8 assists while converting 52.6 percent of his field goals and a whopping 54.5 percent of his 3-point shots.
That includes taking a pass from Luka Doncic and draining a crucial 3-pointer with 18 seconds remaining that gave the Mavs a six-point lead during a 122-117 victory in San Antonio this past Friday.
Carlisle acknowledged there’s a couple of ways to decipher why Brunson’s numbers have increased since he returned from the extra long trip to Denver.
“Once we’re into the season a bit – sometimes you see this with All-Star breaks – guys get away for a week or nine days and come back and they have fresh legs,” Carlisle said. “Once you get a pretty high level of conditioning, sometimes an extended period of rest can actually be OK.
“(Brunson) told me and he told us that the first game back was tough after being out for whatever the number of days it was. But in the games since, he’s done better and better.”
Guard Trey Burke, who spent almost a month in a Dallas hotel last summer after he tested positive for the coronavirus – delaying his chance to join the Mavs in the bubble in Orlando – knows first-hand what Brunson recently experienced. Burke signed a substitution contract with the Mavs on July 1, but due to COVID-19 he wasn’t able to join the team and play until July 31 when he poured in 31 points in 30 minutes while converting 8-of-10 baskets from 3-point range during a 153-149 loss in overtime to the Houston Rockets.
Burke knows how a player’s adrenalin can quickly shift into overdrive once he returns from being away for his team for a long period of time. Therefore, he applauds the work performed by Brunson during these past four games.
“He’s been big for us,” Burke said. “As you know, he hit the game-winning shot (against the Spurs) to seal the game, and in Indiana he played great.
“He’s a playmaker. That’s who he is. He’s a winner. Obviously, he’s won on every level. We’re going to need for him to continue to be big for us.”
Brunson, who tallied 19 points on 8-of-13 shots during Wednesday’s 124-112 win in Indiana, hopes to continue improving his game when the Mavs (8-8) entertain the Nuggets (9-7) on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at American Airlines Center. In the meantime, he’s extremely grateful for the wall-to-wall support the Mavs gave him during his impromptu extended stay in Denver.
“The whole organization made me feel like everything’s going to be fine, which it was obviously,” Brunson said. “They kept looking out after me while I was there.
“Thank you to them for sticking with me and making sure my head was on straight.”
Twitter: @DwainPrice
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