Jalen Brunson’s Quote About Shaking Spurs Coach’s Hand Makes Victor Wembanyama Look Even Worse

Jalen Brunson spoke about his classy postgame moment with Spurs coach Mitch Johnson after the Knicks won the NBA championship in San Antonio. | Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

In the seconds after the Knicks clinched their first NBA championship in over 50 years, as the city of New York erupted with the ear-splitting celebrations of a long-starved fanbase, Jalen Brunson shared a quiet and dignified moment with Spurs coach Mitch Johnson at the scorer’s table.

In a viral video from the Knicks’ title-clinching win in Game 5, Brunson walked over to Johnson with a towel draped over his shoulders and shook Johnson’s hand. The two shared a quick embrace while, Victor Wembanyama, who had just bricked the last futile shot of the game, walked away from Brunson and the Knicks all the way from half-court to the players’ tunnel without taking a single glance back.

The headlines villainizing Wembanyama the following days wrote themselves. As for Brunson, he was interviewed during the Knicks’ championship press tour about his classy gesture to Johnson that only solidified his status as a superstar.

“I hugged and said ‘What's up’ to Coach [Mitch] Johnson from the Spurs first, just to show respect,” Brunson said. “… It was just kind of instinct, like it’s kind of how I was raised. I think win or loss, you always gotta show respect regardless of the outcome. I’ve got a lot of respect for them over there.”

Jalen Brunson on why he went to hug Spurs HC Mitch Johnson before his father after the win:

"I hugged and said what's up to Coach Johnson from the Spurs first, just to show respect… It was just kind of instinct, like how I was raised. I think win or loss, you show respect… pic.twitter.com/t2KFdy7j5l

— NBA Base (@TheNBABase) June 17, 2026

To New Yorkers, Brunson could do no wrong. Wembanyama, on the other hand, was in for a world of criticism.

After a tense NBA Finals series in which the Spurs phenom got away with two fouls on Brunson, his villain arc was complete. He had become one of the most hated sports nemeses in NYC, arguably even reaching the same tier as Knick-killer Trae Young.

And the narrative didn’t stop there. Brunson’s latest comments about being “raised” to show respect to his adversaries only make Wembanyama look worse, even if he is only 22 years old. The criticism was unanimous: Wemby should have shaken Brunson’s—or coach Mike Brown’s, any other Knicks players’—hand. As the soon-to-be face of the NBA, Wembanyama needed to know how to lose with grace.

A history of the NBA’s most infamous handshake snubs: Victor Wembanyama joins spiteful company

LeBron James notoriously refused to shake Dwight Howard’s and Orlando Magic players’ hands after losing in the 2009 Eastern Conference finals. | Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

NBA pundits immediately compared the moment to Larry Bird also snubbing his opponents back in the 1980s when the Celtics and Lakers formed one of the most heated rivalries in the league.

“I didn’t shake hands when we lost to the Lakers,” recalled Bird, via the New York Daily News. “I never shook hands. When the Lakers and Celtics played, we didn’t shake hands. When I first got to play against Magic, there was a hate factor there. It was more than just dislike.”

No one could forget, either, when Isiah Thomas and the Pistons walked off the court without shaking the hands of Michael Jordan and the Bulls following a 1991 Eastern Conference finals series sweep.

“Two years in a row, we shook their hands when they beat us. There was a certain respect to the game that we paid to them,” Jordan said. “That’s sportsmanship, no matter how much it hurts. And believe me, it f---ing hurt. They didn’t have to shake our hands. We knew we whooped their a-- already.”

In more recent basketball history, Wemby’s handshake snub also drew parallels to then-Cavaliers star LeBron James, when he walked straight into the tunnel following Cleveland’s loss to the Magic in the 2009 Eastern Conference finals. The then-24-year-old James declined to shake any Magic players’ hands, even blowing off his Olympic teammate Dwight Howard, and later skipped his postgame availability.

“It’s hard for me to congratulate somebody after you just lose to them,” James said of that ‘09 ECF series. “I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them. That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m a competitor. That’s what I do. It doesn’t make sense for me to go over and shake somebody’s hand.”

It would appear that age has turned James softer, or perhaps The King simply had a change of heart. In the last decade or so he has been seen partaking in the customary postgame tradition of dapping up his playoff opponents, including his long-standing foes in Steph Curry and the Warriors.

At the end of the day, Wembanyama is still too young to have it all figured out. This was his very first postseason and NBA Finals run. It’s inevitable that the Spurs star will become the next face of the NBA, but what’s less set in stone is the kind of player Wemby will embody, a petty Larry Bird or a gracious LeBron James. The choice is completely up to him.

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