How Jalen Brunson Brings Winning From The Court To The Community

Jalen Brunson

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Jalen Brunson has long been understood to be a winner at every level, from high school to college and the NBA. But both he and his family often point to his most significant achievements that go beyond the hardwood. That is the focus of his legacy work in the Second Round Foundation, which brought out nearly a thousand people to his annual Golf and Charity Classic.

What becomes apparent when you listen to the people who execute this work daily, from board members to event operators to the foundation’s leadership, is that the visibility brought by the championship amplified what was already there. The championship did not create the mission but revealed work that had been operating with discipline and intention for years. I sat down with Jalen and his team at the Second Round Foundation’s Charity Golf Classic

Whether you operate a foundation or a successful business, how can you best prepare for the moment where your work will be amplified and featured? As a sports psychiatrist, I see how NBA Champion and NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson is leading on and off the court.

SRF Charity and Golf Classic

Second Round FoundationThe Architecture of Fundamentals

Sandra and Rick Brunson built something into Jalen that appears remarkably simple on the surface and yet proves extraordinarily difficult for most high performers to internalize: the notion that you are always going to have a challenge, and the only variable that matters is how you deal with it and how you overcome it. Second Round Foundation board member Lindsey Kristen describes that you can always pivot and be creative on top of what is solid: "When you have your fundamentals in order, you can always pivot and be creative on top of it for whatever comes your way and be agile." This capacity for agility comes from knowing exactly what matters and what remains fixed, and being able to work creatively around that foundation. This includes the foundations of policies, procedures, and solid governance- which is her personal background that she brings to the board.

The foundation itself has applied this principle to its own evolution. Founded in 2022, it has moved through distinct phases of impact while maintaining an unwavering commitment to its fundamental mission while remaining nimble in the process by which it carries that mission out. Sometimes supporting students does not only mean supporting them in the classroom, as she explained: "A student learns best and can reach their full potential and opportunity when their basic needs are met. When the fundamentals are met, when they are satisfied, when their mental health is calm and in a place where they can receive education and information. When their medical care is consistent."

The research on learning and executive function is clear that when basic needs go unmet, the brain’s threat detection systems activate in ways that inhibit learning, executive function, and the capacity for identity development. Lindsey explains the foundation's trajectory of expansion while holding the center: "We first focused on life-saving resources for team Jamaica Bickel with AED devices and making sure student athletes were supported in emergency situations. We supported Covenant House, and making sure that families and children had safe shelter. And now we're evolving, and sort of our outreach and our partnerships are also growing. But we have always stuck to the same fundamentals." The foundation started by funding life-saving equipment for student athletes, expanded into partnership with Covenant House to ensure that families had shelter, and has now evolved into initiatives ranging from hydroponic farms in 10 New York City public schools to STEM labs to workforce development pathways in drones, EMT certification, and welding. The architecture remained constant even as the specific interventions multiplied and deepened.

Chidi Jenkins, the board trustee who has shaped this philosophy from the foundation’s inception, came to this work through personal transformation: "When I was 17, I met the Brunson family. Coaches and mentors are very important at this stage of life. So the Brunsons came into my life at that and really became kind of like ‘bonus parents,’ is what I call them in a way." This formative experience informs how Chidi approaches the foundation's commitment to meeting people within their circumstances rather than imposing external solutions.

When describing the foundation's approach to dignified support, Chidi is remarkably specific about what removing barriers looks like: "If that looks like dressing the kids so that they feel good walking into school, that's right. That's where we'll meet them. If that's providing the sports bras, so that the girls can feel, you know, like they can engage in physical activity without issue. That's what it is. No questions asked." This commitment to meeting specific needs without judgment extends to Chidi's fundamental critique of conventional philanthropy:

"We really don't need to be telling people what they need. That's, I think, one of the biggest mistakes of philanthropy these days."

Chidi Jenkins, Board Member, Second Round Foundation

The foundation recognizes that the people it serves understand their own needs better than any outside organization ever can.

Second Round Foundation donation to the DREAM Charter Schools

Second Round FoundationBringing together a winning event for a winning cause

The Second Round Foundation, which Jalen cofounded with his mother Sandra and has evolved over four years into a comprehensive community support organization, grew exponentially in the year following the Knicks’ championship run. Albert Hall, who has worked with Jalen across multiple projects and who approaches partnership with deliberation, articulates his own philosophy directly:

We don't do things with everyone. Right. So when it was Jalen Brunson, we knew that the type of people that the Brunson family are and the type of person both on and off the court, Jalen was...they wanted to do it the right way.

Albert Hall, President, HallPass Media

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JULY 12: NBA Summer League co-founder Albert Hall

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This selective approach to partnership ensures that everyone involved shares not just a commitment to the work but a deep alignment about how that work should be executed.

On the culture he has helped build with the foundation, Albert emphasizes what sustains teams across years: "The way this event has grown in 4 years...it’s because we have an amazing team and everybody, just like Jalen, knows that the magic's in the work." He elaborates on what this means for the people who execute it: "Everyone loves doing the work, but more importantly, they just love the smiles, the energy, and the atmosphere that we bring to this event every year." When he describes the principles that hold the team together, Albert is clear about priorities:

"Integrity, honesty, collaboration, and joy and...the crescendo of the accomplishment."

Albert Hall

These principles determine how teams produce sustained output across championship seasons and beyond. Albert speaks about how the foundation has been nicknamed after Sandra: "We're Sandra's team is what we kind of joke around with." This reflects that sustainable organizations are built around core values and people who embody them consistently, not around individual heroism.

The numbers that Samantha Macias, marketing and events manager at Hall Pass Media, outlined tell part of the story: "With the golfers, we hit our maximum capacity at Westchester, so that's 288 golfers." For the dinner that followed, "we have 845 dinner guests. " The scale of attendance multiplication is evident in the table count alone: "we had 44 tables last year. We have 70 tables this year."

When Samantha reflects on what made growth possible while maintaining focus on who is being served, the emphasis returns to the people and their commitment: “Sandra and the board have just been amazing as far as making sure that the bigger picture is also being served and talked about as far as giving back to all of the groups that they do.”

Team First

When Jalen first approached this work, he said something deceptively simple that captures the entire philosophy:

All of my goals are basically team-based...plain and simple.

NBA Champion Jalen Brunson

That statement contains within it a recognition that championship performance is not something any individual accomplishes alone, and that the habits of excellence that allowed him to perform at the highest level in basketball are the same habits required to build something of consequence in the community.

Monica McNutt, the Knicks and WNBA analyst who has followed this foundation closely, observed that:

"There's no better way to have an event grow than to come off of a championship line."

Monica McNutt

But the Brunson family understood something most organizations miss: growth from visibility only sustains when fundamentals remain unchanged. The championship elevated the platform, but the work was already built to handle the expansion.

The Year After Problem

One of the more pointed observations I have made in my sports & performance psychiatry writing concerns what happens to athletes and organizations after they achieve their stated goal. Eight different teams have won the NBA championship in eight consecutive years, which creates a fascinating question:

what distinguishes the teams that go on to repeat or sustain excellence from those that collapse once the immediate goal has been achieved?

Monica McNutt

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NBA Analyst Monica McNutt frames this with characteristic insight:

If I could pitch a documentary, it would be on the year after, because I'm curious; I mean, there's a reason that statistically in the league, we've now had eight different champions in eight years. But I'm curious what would be required to buck that trend for the first time since the Warriors did it, and does this group sort of have the personality or the fortitude to be a trend breaker?"

Monica’s central question cuts to the psychological essence of the problem: "I’m curious to see how much winning whets their appetite, or if it does sort of quell that desire to be at the top because they’ve tasted that." The answer, in the case of the Brunson family and their foundation, appears to be that winning did neither of these things because the appetite was never for winning on the court alone.

This is, in psychiatric and psychological terms, a problem of intrinsic motivation and hedonic adaptation. The Brunsons and the Second Round Foundation made the work separate from the accolade. The championship is not the goal of the foundation. It never was. This distinction is not semantic; it is structural.

The Visibility Amplifier

What the championship did accomplish was the amplification of something that required amplification: access and equity for young people who are overlooked, second-guessed, treated as second-round picks in life despite their potential. Nija Ali Williams, the foundation’s CEO, captured this precisely:

“Our visibility has grown exponentially. The visibility has brought more people to us, more interest in the causes that we want to support, and more interest in the gaps that we want to bridge. And so as a result of that, this year, we're able to lean into some food justice and food insecurity."

Nija Ali Williams, Second Round Foundation CEO

The championship was never the origin story; it became the megaphone for a story already being told.

The foundation's leadership under Nija has been able to expand hydroponic farming initiatives across multiple schools with Ferrari Foundation partnership support, to create STEM laboratories in schools that otherwise lack technological infrastructure, to develop workforce pathways in skills-based trades for young people for whom college is not the right pathway. Nija articulates why this expansion matters: "College is not for everyone. So looking at workforce development initiatives has now been something we've been able to focus on."

These are not new initiatives that emerged because of the championship but ones the championship made possible to scale. Nija frames the foundation's purpose beyond the championship: "

Jalen has done all that he's done to this point, but this is really the legacy that he's leaving behind... When all of that dies down, he's looking at, what does his legacy look like? And so planting seeds for the underserved and overlooked is really the core of the work that we do."

Nija Ali Williams, Second Round Foundation CEO

This distinction between achievement and legacy shapes how the foundation operates.

What Winning Looks Like Beyond the Trophy

The Second Round Foundation has grown tremendously in four years. The meaningful growth is in the quality of the team executing the work, the expansion of the geographic footprint from a single event into multiple communities, and the foundation's deepening understanding of what its recipients actually need rather than what the organization assumed they needed.

Bringing winning from the court to the community means taking the discipline that allowed Jalen to develop as an elite athlete and applying it to team building, decision making, and staying true to fundamentals when resources expand. It means recognizing that the mental toughness required to perform under playoff pressure is the same mental toughness required to show up for communities year after year, through winning seasons and losing seasons and uncertain ones.

Speaking with the people who run the Second Round Foundation, the focus is on the work itself. They speak about meeting young people where they are and providing resources they need, about building something together as a team, about continuing this work whether the spotlight is on it or not. That is what winning looks like beyond the court.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com