The New York Knicks went out and won their first NBA title since 1973 on Saturday night in San Antonio. Something about teams wearing blue and orange in San Antonio leads to titles. We didn’t make the rules.
But joking aside, Florida’s trio from 2025, Walter Clayton Jr., Will Richard, and Alijah Martin, just wrapped their own respective rookie seasons in the NBA with mixed results. Clayton was servicable in spots, but his shooting did struggle at times, and he has already been traded from Utah to Memphis. Martin bounced back and forth between the G-League and Toronto, appearing in 23 games with the Raptors. Richard started out as a sparkplug for Golden State off the bench, but seemingly lost favor down the stretch.
The moral is that if one were to predict right now if any of those three would ultimately lead a team to an NBA title, most NBA fans would say no. Those same fans probably said the same thing about Jalen Brunson after his rookie season.
Florida’s 2025 trio has parallels to Jalen Brunson
Interestingly enough, Karl Anthony Towns became the first No. 1 overall pick drafted since 2015 to go on and win an NBA title. But even KAT wasn’t the star of New York.
That title went to Brunson, who was a 2nd round pick in the 2018 draft with Dallas. That was despite Brunson being a first-team All-American and winning the national title with Villanova in 2016 and 2018.
Sound familiar to our Gator trio?
And even in Brunson’s first two years in the NBA, he was a solid player off the bench but averaged less than 10 points a game for each of his first two seasons with Dallas. It wasn’t until his fourth year in the NBA, 2021-22, that he really started to emerge on the national radar, and it wasn’t until he made his move to New York in year five that he started to blossom.
Brunson’s rise should give hope for the Gator trio because even though Brunson is considered small by NBA standards, he is a no-nonsense player who isn’t looking for excuses when things go south. There is value in having a championship pedigree, but that value often gets overlooked by NBA scouts in favor of length and size.
The tough shots Brunson hit throughout this NBA playoff run sparked a ton of flashbacks to Clayton. Brunson’s no-nonsense attitude feels a lot like Martin. And his willingness to play whatever role he is asked to do is like Richard.
All three of Florida’s 2025 still have a long way to go in their NBA journey, and we aren’t saying to go out and place a big bet that any of these three are for sure going to be an NBA Finals MVP in the future.
But given the pathway that Brunson just took, along with the similarities that they all share with Brunson, we aren’t going to totally rule out a similar rise in the near future.
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