00:00Coach, do you believe in DNA when it comes to players?
00:04Do you think there's any coincidence, Coach?
00:06Jalen Brunson's won two national championships.
00:09And here he is on the cusp of two games out from winning an NBA championship.
00:15And the guy was a second rounder.
00:18Nobody thought the guy was going to be this player.
00:20I don't care who people are.
00:22I had Jay Billis on a couple weeks ago.
00:24And he goes, nobody in their minds thought this guy was going to be this guy here.
00:30Do you believe in that kind of DNA, Coach, that something inside of a player that is a championship quality?
00:37Absolutely.
00:38I think what's hard is from the outside to be able to identify it.
00:44Now, once we see what Jalen Brunson is doing, then you go, oh, yeah.
00:50But to look at that, look, he fell to the second round because nobody identified it.
00:57You know, it's hard to do.
00:59But I absolutely believe in it.
01:01He has got a really special mental toughness.
01:07He's physically very tough, too.
01:08But his mental toughness, the thing, like I voted him, I voted him two years in a row as a
01:14clutch player of the year.
01:15He didn't win it this year, but I voted for him again.
01:18And what has really amazed me is, you know, not just what he can do down the stretch in games
01:25in fourth quarters, but when he's having a bad game, he can still come through in those moments, play with
01:35the confidence and everything else.
01:36Well, I mean, look, other than the last five or six minutes of game one, he hasn't been very good
01:42in this series.
01:43He has not been very good.
01:45And yet you can see how San Antonio defends him, defends him.
01:50I mean, there's that fear factor of what this guy is capable of doing.
01:55I mean, he's 19 for 56 in the series.
01:58I mean, you know, he's struggling, and yet here he is.
02:04I mean, he's shooting in the low 30s.
02:06He has as many turnovers as assists.
02:09But when it was time in game one, there he was.
02:12And I think he's special.
02:15I think he gives his team special confidence because they know if they can get the game to a certain
02:22point, they've got the guy who can close it out.
02:27He's special.
02:28He may not be one of a kind.
02:30I like the old Bum Phillips line about Earl Campbell, and he said, Earl might not be in a class
02:37by himself, but it doesn't take very long to call the role.
02:40And that's how I would put it with Brunson down the stretch.
02:45He might not be one of a kind as a closer, but it's a small group.
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