Visualizing the Grind: Jalen Brunson’s 2026 NBA Playoff Run
With the new NBA season tipping off this month, we wanted to share this graphic before the next chapter begins.
Great sports graphics do more than display statistics. They help people see the story inside the data.
For Contender Studio, the Jalen Brunson 2026 NBA Playoffs graphic was a chance to explore exactly that: how do you turn 19 games of box-score information into a visual narrative about workload, momentum and, ultimately, a championship?
Brunson and the New York Knicks went 16-3 in the 2026 postseason and won the franchise’s first NBA title since 1973. Brunson averaged 28.4 points, 6.1 assists and 3.2 rebounds per game, and was named both Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP.
How to read the graphic
Each spoke is one game, running clockwise in chronological order. The length and color of each bar show Brunson’s minutes:
Orange: 40+ minutes
Blue: 31 to 40 minutes
Gray: 30 minutes or less
At the tip of each bar, a green W or red L marks the result, and the score and date run along the bar. Dashed lines split the circle into four series, each tagged with its opponent’s logo: Hawks, 76ers, Cavaliers and Spurs. The darker navy wedge behind the bars marks the 13-game winning streak.
The headline numbers
Over 19 games, Brunson played 37.0 minutes a night and scored 539 total points. He shot 46.5% from the field on 21.7 attempts, 36.3% from three and 84.6% from the line, where he made 5.8 of 6.8 attempts per game. He also posted a +12.3 average plus/minus. That free throw volume says a lot about how he scores: he creates contact, gets to the line and rarely misses.
Four series, four different stories
Hawks (4-2). The only losses before the Finals came here, and both were by a single point (106-107 and 108-109). Then the series flipped. New York won the last three games by 16, 29 and 51 points. The 140-89 clincher let Brunson sit at 28:46, and it carries the graphic’s +41 callout.
76ers (4-0). A sweep, and the bars show it was controlled. Brunson played 30:42, 40:48, 38:16 and just 28:19 in the 144-114 clincher, his lightest night of the postseason.
Cavaliers (4-0). This was the heaviest workload on the chart. Game 1 produced the longest bar of the run at 46:24, followed by 40:07 and 41:05 in the next two games. New York then closed with a 130-93 rout in which he played only 30:52.
Spurs (4-1). The Finals gave the chart its most dramatic stretch. New York won the first two games 105-95 and 105-104, then dropped a 111-115 decision, the loss that ended the streak. The Knicks answered with a 107-106 win, in which Brunson played 44:27, and a 94-90 title-clinching win in which he played 41:07 and scored 45 points, the biggest scoring callout on the graphic.
What the shape of the data tells us
Workload tracked the stakes. Seven of his 19 games landed in the 40+ tier, and they cluster in the tightest spots: a Hawks game lost by one, the opening games of the Cavaliers series, and the final two Finals games. The gray bars mostly show up in blowouts.
Dominance was the norm. Outside of the Hawks series and the Finals, New York’s smallest margin was six points. The sweeps of Philadelphia and Cleveland were won by about 21 points per game on average.
The close games defined the title. Four of the five Finals games were decided by four points or fewer, and Brunson logged 37, 35, 44 and 41 minutes in them. That is a team trusting its star to carry the final stretch.
Why we built it this way
A box score table gives you averages, but it can’t show you the rhythm of a playoff run: the grind of a long series, the sudden swing of the one-point losses, and the stretch where a player stayed elite while barely leaving the floor. We color-coded minutes instead of points on purpose. Workload shows trust, and trust is what a championship run is built on.
Love seeing the story inside the data?
Contact Contender Studio at info@contender.studio or visit www.contender.studio to start a project.