Jalen Brunson hosted the Saturday Night Live season premiere with four Knicks teammates in the house, turning his monologue into a victory lap for the NBA champions.
Reigning NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson stepped out as host of the “Saturday Night Live” 52nd season premiere Saturday night and brought the New York Knicks with him.
Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, O.G. Anunoby, and Josh Hart sat in the audience for the monologue, fired questions at their point guard, then walked on stage. The bits kept circling back to the title the Knicks won in June against the San Antonio Spurs.
AP basketball writer Tim Reynolds reported Brunson as the first active NBA player to host since LeBron James in 2007, and the first pro athlete in the chair since Travis Kelce in 2023.
Brunson did not pretend he was there to sing. He framed the gig the way he frames crunch time.
He told the audience he would handle the night like a Finals game for New York.
"I’m going to approach this the same way I approach a Knicks finals game,"
Then came the punchline that tied the whole monologue to the title run.
"The first three quarters of the show are going to be god-awful. The last sketch is going to be amazing."
Towns asked whether a player can foul out of “SNL.” Told no, he took the win.
"so I can be here, like, the whole show? Nice."
Bridges needled Brunson about arm length and joked he would never fly. Hart brought up the money Brunson left on the table to sign with the Knicks, $113 million, as the bit framed it, and Brunson needled Hart right back about a poke in the backside after the Knicks won the NBA Cup last season.
Anunoby got a huge ovation, then went straight at a Finals memory: Brunson’s late miss in Game 4 against San Antonio, and Anunoby’s last-second tip-in that basically sealed the win. The Knicks closed that series in five games. Anunoby’s verdict on the night was short.
"That was awesome,"
Brunson also worked in Madison Square Garden, the Knicks’ home floor, and called it the exact spot where “Taylor and Travis got married.” Longtime “SNL” star Kenan Thompson played ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith in the monologue. Brunson’s line was that the loud Knicks fan on TV had questioned him enough to owe an apology.
The New York Post reported Brunson as the first Knicks player ever to host “SNL,” on the season 52 premiere with musical guest Katseye, after a championship that ended a 53-year drought for the franchise. The Post also placed him as the fifth NBA player to host, after Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and LeBron James, and as the third host from a New York team after Eli Manning and Derek Jeter. Ben Stiller praised the monologue as the best ever.
Russell hosted in 1979, a decade after he left the floor. Jordan hosted a season premiere in 1991. Barkley hosted four times, including as an active player in 1993. James hosted in 2007 while with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Brunson now sits on that same short list, and he did it with three other season-premiere hosts in the NBA group: Jordan, Barkley, and James.
By the end, the four teammates were on stage with him. The jokes stayed inside the title run, the Garden, the late-game habits, and the locker-room ribbing that comes with a real winner’s night.
When a team finally finishes the job, the country gets the jokes, and the guys who earned them.
