Jalen Brunson takes mental break from Knicks by working on building Millennium Falcon out of LEGOs

CLEVELAND — Jalen Brunson gets lost in the work.

It’s a common phrase for basketball players, who transform their minds and bodies into machines geared toward navigating 4,700 square feet of hardwood.

But in this instance, the ‘work’ is something much different. It’s a 7,500-piece LEGO set.

“Once I get going, it’s kind of hard to stop,” Brunson says. “Put some music on. Close the door. No one bothers me.”

Brunson is neither a LEGO collector nor an enthusiast. Not yet, at least.

The impetus to building a massive Millennium Falcon was Brunson’s passion for Star Wars, the sci-fi series he picked up with the prequel trilogy (Episode III, ‘Revenge of the Sith,’ remains Brunson’s favorite and he pushes back at the opinion that actor Hayden Christensen was underwhelming as Anakin Skywalker).

The LEGO set now sells online for $850 before tax, which is a drop in the ocean for a player earning $28 million this season.

But competition for Han Solo’s ship moved faster than lightspeed.

“I’d been trying to get it for like two years and it just sells out,” he says. “It’s like when a new sneaker drops, they just sell out quick.

“My fiancé finally got it for me.”

Brunson’s move to the Knicks, perhaps the franchise’s most significant free agency signing since Amar’e Stoudemire, provided the 26-year-old an ideal environment for LEGO construction.

His new home wasn’t equipped with WiFi, leaving Brunson without the temptation of devices. He worked diligently but the Millennium Falcon, as Solo once explained, required a lot of modifications before making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

As of Sunday, Brunson was on roughly step 500 out of 1,379, less than halfway finished. Installation of WiFi didn’t help the timeline.

“It kind of slowed down since I got that,” he says.

Still, Brunson found value in the mental decompression during such a project. It may lead to further LEGO collecting and constructing, he says. Brunson’s day job, after all, is pretty intense.

Following a stellar start to the season, the Knicks (3-3) were delivered a reality check with blowout road defeats to the Bucks and Cavs, the Eastern Conference’s top teams.

Although the entire lineup struggled, Brunson shouldered the responsibility in postgame interviews by repeating, “That’s on me.” If nothing else, the words reiterated Brunson’s leadership on a team that never filled that role last season.

Brunson’s gotten farther than most expected with that kind of attitude. He fell to the draft’s second round despite two NCAA titles with Villanova, a drop largely due to Brunson’s physical attributes.

“My entire career I’ve been told I’m too short, too slow, all that nonsense,” Brunson said.

In Star Wars terms, he was underestimated like Yoda on planet Dagobah. Now he’s the starting Knicks point guard and building the Millennium Falcon.

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