Brunson's family office runs the family and the business

Athlete wealth runs on a short clock, and Thirty Third Management Group—named for the 2018 NBA draft slot of New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson—has launched with leadership drawn almost entirely from his household. Focus Financial Partners' newest advisory client is the family itself, with Focus serving as financial advisor to Brunson, his family and the new company, WealthManagement.com reported. The company will represent clients across professional sports, business and philanthropy, making it a family office and an agency under one roof.

Inside the household, Sandra Brunson, Jalen's mother, is president, and his sister Erica is director of client services and will lead an initiative aimed at women's professional sports, an area the report calls underserved. Connor Cashaw, a former professional basketball player who has been part of Jalen's team since 2025, is director of business development, leaving one outside hire in an operating role while the family holds the rest.

The launch arrives at a high point for Brunson: the Knicks won their first NBA championship in 53 years in June, and he was unanimously named the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player. In a statement, he said the venture lets the family take ownership of his off-court business and build something that reflects who they are, and that everything they do is rooted in trust.

Goldman Sachs' wealth management business already had a foothold in the household's affairs: it counts some Knicks players as clients, according to Bloomberg, and Matt Kennedy, a Villanova graduate who was a teammate of Knicks players Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges, is on that team. Brunson confirmed on X that he was a wealth management client of Kennedy's. Whether that relationship continues alongside Focus's mandate is not something the coverage addresses.

Thirty Third inverts the usual family-office division of labor, in which family members hold board seats while professionals run the machinery. Here the family holds the operating seats, one outside hire runs business development, and Focus sits at the family level rather than inside the firm, a structure that works for one family's affairs and gets harder once outside clients are paying fees, because the principal's interests, the clients' interests and the brand all travel through the same few people. As this publication has argued, acquirers in this market have been paying for gatekeeper seats instead of assets under management, and Focus's seat here is precisely that: signed before there is a client roster to hold.

The difference from a multigenerational office is the clock. Thirty Third has to become something other than a holding company for one career if it intends to outlast Brunson. Watch whether it signs a client who is not a Brunson.