What If Jalen Brunson Never Left Dallas? The Fantasy Domino Chain
A rejected four-year, $55M extension sent Brunson to New York — where he's now a top-30 fantasy guard putting up 40.5 FPTS/G.
A steady 40.5 FPTS/G floor makes him a set-and-forget guard, not a trade chip.
- Brunson: 26 pts, 6.8 ast, 40.5 FPTS/G in 2025-26
- Dallas rejected a 4yr/$55M extension — twice
- Signed with NY on 4yr/$104M in June 2022
- Knicks dealt No. 13 pick Jalen Duren to clear his cap space
- Duren: 19.5 pts, 10.5 reb, 38 FPTS/G in 2025-26
Here's a fun offseason rabbit hole with real fantasy stakes: Jalen Brunson almost never became a Knick. Back in December 2021, Brunson and his CAA reps asked Dallas for a four-year, $55 million extension. The Mavericks said no. They said no again a few months later. By the time Dallas finally circled back after the trade deadline, Brunson had already outgrown the number and walked to New York on a four-year, $104 million deal that summer.
That single front-office whiff reshaped two franchises. Brunson is now our #30 overall player and #14 among guards, coming off a 2025-26 line of 26 points, 3.3 rebounds and 6.8 assists across 74 games — good for 40.5 fantasy points per contest. Rewind and imagine Dallas actually locks him up cheap, and the entire Knicks rebuild plays out differently, right down to which players end up on your fantasy roster.
The Draft Dominoes
The move to sign Brunson is exactly why New York punted its 2022 lottery equity. The Knicks selected Ousmane Dieng at No. 11, flipped him to Oklahoma City for three firsts, traded up to grab Jalen Duren at No. 13, then shipped Duren to Detroit with Kemba Walker as a salary dump. That maneuvering — plus a later deal sending Alec Burks and Nerlens Noel to Detroit — cleared the cap room for Brunson and Isaiah Hartenstein.
So the 'Knicks traded Jalen Duren for nothing' takes always missed the point. You don't land Brunson without moving Duren and the salary attached to him. In a world where Dallas keeps Brunson, New York has no reason to gut its picks for cap space — it likely drafts and holds in the lottery instead, and Duren maybe never becomes a Piston at all.
Duren, for the record, turned into a real player. He posted 19.5 points, 10.5 rebounds and 2 assists over 70 games in 2025-26, worth 38 fantasy points per game as our #42 overall option and the #7 center. Hartenstein, the other cap-clearing casualty, landed in Oklahoma City and chipped in 9.2 points and 9.4 boards (29.4 FPTS/G) across 47 games last season.
The Fantasy Bottom Line
None of this changes what Brunson is right now: a rock-solid, high-floor guard who played 74 games and never dipped below usable. That 40.5 FPTS/G output makes him a comfortable weekly starter, not a name you're shopping. Hold him, plug him in, and stop overthinking the timeline that never happened — the guard Dallas didn't want is doing just fine in orange and blue.
