Generally speaking, when New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson takes a shot, he doesn’t miss.
But when a basketball teammate introduced him to his now-wife, Ali Marks Brunson, 29, during their freshman year at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Illinois, “she was like, ‘Oh, you’re on JV,'” he lamented on a December episode of “The Roommates Show,” a podcast he co-hosts with teammate Josh Hart and businessman friend Matt Hillman.
When the future NBA second-round draft pick gently corrected her, he continued. “She was like, ‘Oh, okay,’ and kind of fired me, and then, yeah, she left for about two years.”
Not that they never flocked. His bride, who earned her doctorate in physical therapy in 2021, emphasized, “We’ve been friends for several years, and we started dating in fourth grade.”
But with Ali planning to attend the University of Illinois and Ali destined to score in two national championships at Villanova University in Philadelphia, Ali admitted his ambivalence until their relationship broke up in 2013, saying, “I didn’t want to date.” “Long distance is tough.”
