The jalen brunson contract story now starts with Dallas’s reported $55.5 million four-year offer and ends with Brunson leaving for a four-year, $104 million deal with the Knicks in summer 2022. That gap is the frame around a negotiation that never got close to the finish line.
Dallas and Brunson
Marc Stein said on the ALL NBA Podcast that Brunson’s representatives “laughed” when the Mavericks signaled they would be willing to sign him for $55.5 million over four years. The figure was the most Dallas could have offered ahead of the 2021-22 season.
Rick Brunson described Dallas’s attempt to re-sign his son midway through that season as “That was a 30-second conversation”. He added, “I wasn’t on the phone, but how I got the message was, ‘You guys wouldn’t be interested in that deal now, would you?’ That’s how it was said to me. I just laughed.”
April 2022 and the Knicks
The timeline hardened in April 2022, when Tim MacMahon reported that Dallas did not offer the $55.5 million deal and did not engage in negotiations with Brunson’s representatives. By summer 2022, Brunson had signed a four-year, $104 million contract with the Knicks.
That sequence left Dallas watching a guard walk away for far more money than its reported number, after a stretch in which the club never got to a real bargaining table. The contrast is sharper because the $55.5 million offer sat well below the deal Brunson ultimately accepted in New York.
Luka Dončić Fit
Marc Stein also suggested Dallas could have repaired the relationship by making a blow-away offer above Brunson’s market value. Even then, the fit with Luka Dončić would have remained a live issue, because both are at their best when they are running the show.
That leaves the Brunson file as both a missed negotiation and a roster question that never fully disappeared. Dallas had its chance, Brunson took the bigger deal, and the gap between the two numbers still defines the story.
