Martha Stewart Opens Up About the Time Jalen Brunson Broke Her Toe During a Knicks Game
If you’ve been following the Roommates Show, you already know Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart bring an energy to their podcast that’s unlike anything else in the NBA media space.
But the March 26 episode delivered a moment that even the most dedicated listeners didn’t see coming.
During that episode, Martha Stewart showed up to confront Brunson about an incident from last May’s Eastern Conference Finals run that left her with a broken toe.
Martha Stewart’s Broken Toe Goes Viral
Here’s the scene for anyone who needs a refresher. It was last May at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks were playing the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals. The kind of game where the Garden is at its absolute loudest.
The matchup went into overtime, which is an important context for what comes next.
Stewart, 84, was sitting courtside, as one does when you’re a celebrity at MSG. She was wearing open-toe sandals, which, in hindsight, was the fatal error.
At some point during the game, Brunson — 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds of relentless point guard energy — stepped on her toe while running up the court. He later dove for a ball out of bounds, crashing into her and briefly sitting on her lap.
Stewart knew immediately her toe was broken. But because the game went into overtime, she couldn’t leave right away.
So she sat there, courtside at the Garden, through an entire overtime period of an Eastern Conference Finals game with a broken big toe.
After the final buzzer, she went directly to the Hospital for Special Surgery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The ‘Roommates Show’ Confrontation
Fast forward to the podcast episode. Stewart, Brunson and Hart watched a clip from her December appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where she first told the story publicly.
Then Stewart turned to Brunson and gave him the full account, face to face.
“You jumped up really fast. And I remember saying to you, ‘It’s okay,’” she said on the podcast. “You had no idea that you had hurt me. I didn’t say you hurt me, but I said, ‘It’s okay.’ It wasn’t okay at all.”
Classic Brunson — he was apologetic but admitted he didn’t remember the incident at all. When you’re locked into an overtime playoff game at MSG, you’re probably not cataloging every courtside collision.
Stewart went on to reveal that the injury took a full year to heal — and even joked about its legacy.
“They’ve named it the ‘Stewart-Brunson fracture,’” she said. “I have an X-ray, I’m going to leave you a picture of it… it was actually a break, so anyways, it’s better now… It took one year to heal.”
No Hard Feelings Between the Two
To her credit, Stewart wasn’t there to hold a grudge. She owned her part in it.
“It’s my fault for wearing open-toe shoes to a basketball game,” Stewart reasoned. “I look back at it as just something silly, stupid, and funny. It was stupid of me.”
The aftermath of the original incident had some good Brunson family moments too. After the game, Stewart ran into Brunson’s parents, Rick and Sandra, in the Hamptons and told them what happened.
Brunson’s father — an assistant coach for the Knicks — immediately FaceTimed his son to virtually apologize to Stewart on his behalf. Brunson then sent Stewart a signed basketball, which she gave to her grandson.
Peak Jalen Brunson Content
This whole saga is such a perfectly Brunson story. The guy was so dialed into an overtime Eastern Conference Finals game that he didn’t even register crashing into Stewart courtside and breaking her toe.
Then months later, he’s sitting on his own podcast, genuinely apologetic but completely unable to recall the play. That’s the kind of tunnel vision you want from your franchise point guard.
It’s also exactly the kind of content that makes the Roommates Show worth following — two teammates creating a space where moments like this can play out naturally.
Stewart confronting Brunson in person, complete with X-ray evidence and a joke fracture name, is the type of sidebar that makes an already memorable playoff run even more unforgettable.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
