A whole bunch of plugged-in NBA reporters believe Jalen Brunson is going to sign with the Knicks

The New York Knicks have not been particularly coy about their pursuit of impending free agent point guard Jalen Brunson. The entire league knows they want Brunson and are willing to free up big cap space to give him a monster deal. But the Dallas Mavericks are the only pro team Brunson has ever known. They just made the conference finals, and they supposedly badly want to re-sign him. Surely that is enough to get Brunson back, right?

Apparently not.

The Brunson-to-the-Knicks chatter reached a fever pitch online Tuesday, as pretty much every plugged-in NBA writer declared Brunson’s free agency decision to be fait accompli.

We begin with national writer Marc Stein, who is usually up on his Mavs chatter:

“Growing resignation,” eh? That sounds promising.

ESPN’s Tim MacMahon sounded a similar tune.

But the coup de grace came from Dallas beat writer Tim Cato of The Athletic. He took it a step further, saying that the Mavericks are already planning for a post-Brunson future.

“Within the Mavericks’ organization, conversations have shifted from re-signing Brunson to replacing his production, as well as the possibility of a sign-and-trade deal involving Brunson that could at least prevent Dallas from losing him for nothing.”

That’s a whole lot of buzz, folks. If you’re a Jalen Brunson fan — and you probably should be, because he’s vey good — you should feel very good tonight.