Television — Noozify Original — September 28, 2026

The Fifth Man: Jalen Brunson, Katseye, and the Quiet Logic of SNL's Season Opener

By Dan Chafetz

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There are easier ways to spend a Saturday night after winning an NBA championship than walking onto the Saturday Night Live stage and agreeing to be the butt of the joke.

Jalen Brunson did it anyway.

When SNL returned to Studio 8H on September 26th for its 52nd season, the Knicks star took the hosting chair, and Katseye made its first appearance as the show's musical guest. On paper, an NBA point guard and an international girl group made an unlikely combination. But Brunson was having a very New York summer, Katseye was having a very big year, and SNL has always been good at recognizing the cultural moment before turning it into material.

Brunson had just helped bring New York its first NBA championship in 53 years and added a Finals MVP award. He also became only the fifth professional basketball player ever to host SNL, following Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and LeBron James, who hosted in 2007. For a sport that has become one of the dominant languages of American celebrity, basketball has produced surprisingly few SNL hosts.

The explanation may have less to do with fame than with vulnerability.

Hosting SNL means willingly surrendering control. A host has to look ridiculous, stumble through a joke, play an exaggerated version of themselves, and, above all, accept that the audience may laugh at them rather than with them.

Brunson seemed to understand the assignment. In his monologue, he compared the show to a playoff game, warning that "the first three quarters of the show are going to be godawful" before promising a late comeback. It was classic self-deprecation, and it captured the peculiar confidence SNL demands: you have to be comfortable enough with your own status to make fun of it.

He didn't have to carry the bit alone. Kenan Thompson appeared as Stephen A. Smith, the night's resident skeptic, and several of Brunson's actual Knicks teammates — Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Josh Hart — dropped by, giving the opening a loose locker-room energy.

The premiere also gave two new featured players, Grace Reiter and Saidah Belo-Osagie, a surprisingly substantial introduction. According to Deadline, they appeared together in a sketch about the reality competition The Debut: Dream Academy, in which Reiter's contestant earns her invitation only after witnessing an executive, played by Ashley Padilla, commit a hit-and-run. Reiter's credits include The Chair Company and the forthcoming Minimum Wage, and Belo-Osagie's include the short film Tinge and her solo production Saidah Gets Closure. Their backgrounds suggest SNL is looking for talent beyond the traditional improv-comedy assembly line, in independent comedy, alternative performance, and smaller creative scenes.

They arrived as the show was reshaping itself. For the first time in seven years, a season premiere went forward without Chloe Fineman, who departed during the summer. Bowen Yang had left midway through Season 51, and Martin Herlihy of Please Don't Destroy stepped away before the new season. A new cast doesn't simply bring new performers. It changes who gets paired together, which voices become dominant, and what kinds of sketches suddenly feel possible.

The politics arrived right on schedule. The cold open, set at Gracie Mansion, had Ramy Youssef's Mayor Zohran Mamdani recording a mock storm advisory before James Austin Johnson's Donald Trump interrupted, and the conversation ricocheted from the Knicks to artificial intelligence to geopolitics. On Weekend Update, Colin Jost and Michael Che moved through Trump, Xi Jinping, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and Jane Wickline, newly part of the repertory cast alongside Padilla, played Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, reassuring the public about artificial intelligence while repeatedly undercutting his own argument. SNL is clearly watching the industry's public messaging closely enough to turn it into material.

Then came Katseye.

The group — Daniela Avanzini, Megan Skiendiel, Lara Raj, and Yoonchae Jeung — arrived with momentum of its own. Its third EP, WILD, was released on August 14th, and the group was in the middle of a sold-out world tour. "Animal" leaned into a retro, burlesque-inspired visual style, and "Hootie Frutti" was built around Brazilian funk rhythms, a modest but notable bit of musical adventurousness for network television.

The most revealing joke of the night came in a sketch that barely announced itself. "The Office MVP" cast Brunson as Darius, an office employee who keeps shooting basketballs into the wastebasket while everyone else works. Eventually, the joke turns inside out. Darius is Brunson himself, pursuing a bizarre second career as an "office shooter."

It's a simple sketch, but it lands on something larger. Athletes who host SNL enter a world where their greatest professional advantage disappears. Years of learning to make the right decision under pressure guarantee nothing when a joke has to land. For an elite athlete, that is a strange trade to make.

Brunson appeared willing to make it.

SNL has spent decades asking people who are exceptionally good at something to become beginners at something else. Athletes, actors, musicians, and politicians arrive with carefully constructed public identities, and for ninety minutes the show pulls those identities apart to see what happens when the person behind them is asked to be awkward, silly, or simply willing to fail.

That may be the quiet logic behind Brunson's appearance. He didn't need another stage to prove he could play basketball. He came to SNL to try something with no championship banner waiting at the end. And that, more than the Knicks references, the celebrity cameos, or even the jokes themselves, may have been the most revealing part of the season opener: watching someone who had just reached the top of his profession willingly step into a room where nobody is expected to be perfect.