Ali Marks Brunson, wife of New York Knicks superstar Jalen Brunson, has the couple’s 17-month-old daughter to thank for opening up her life personally and professionally.
“We’ve been in the [New York] area for four years ever since Jalen and I moved to New York,” Ali exclusively told Luxury Handbag Shopping via her partnership with ALOHA. “But it wasn’t until I had Jordyn that opened up this whole other world of moms. I was like, ‘You guys all live here? Who knew.’”
Jalen and Ali — who started dating in high school before marrying in 2023 — welcomed their first baby, daughter Jordyn, in July 2024.
It was only then that Ali’s social circle bloomed and expanded in unexpected ways.
“It’s an amazing community, the mom world,” Ali continued. “They rally around each other for sure.”
Jalen signed a four-year, $104 million contract with the Knicks in July 2022 after spending the first four seasons of his NBA career with the Dallas Mavericks.
Since arriving in New York, Ali has seen the term WAG — an abbreviation for “wives and girlfriends,” most typically used to describe the partners of professional athletes — evolve and take on different meanings, though Ali argued it’s still not necessarily a badge of honor.
“I think still, at its core, it has a negative connotation,” she said of the term. “It’s linked to this group of women and we are connected to the sport itself. It’s, like, wife of a basketball player. It kind of depends on the situation. It’s very easy to be like, ‘Oh, the WAGs are going to dinner tonight.’ You don’t mean that negatively. It’s just easy to round everybody up.”
Ali said the community of wives and girlfriends in the NBA that she associates with “are all so down to Earth, so relatable.”
“We’re very separate people from them,” she continued. “I think everybody understands that, at this point, if you’re looking at a wife of a professional athlete, they are standing on their own two feet, doing something for themselves. They have careers. They all have substance.”
That is evidenced by The AMB Method, a strength-focused training approach that Ali created last year, which was inspired by her pregnancy.
“When I was pregnant, I became certified as a pregnancy and postpartum corrective exercise specialist,” Ali explained. “It’s led through a physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Duvall. It’s an online course. It’s really informative and it helps me curate my own programming.”
She continued, “Once I started finding other moms in the area, talking to more people, everyone seemed to be like, ‘Can I use it? Can we try to work out together?’ And it kind of launched in that way. In late August, I did my first workout class and it was just all the movements I was doing with physical therapy clients that presented the way I am. People really enjoyed it.”
The AMB Method is designed to improve posture, mobility, and functional strength. Each session emphasizes low-impact, mindful movement that helps strengthen the deep core and tone the entire body through rehab-based therapeutic exercises with Pilates-inspired core sequences. Whether you’re newly postpartum or years into your journey, this class offers a supportive environment to reconnect with your body and build full body strength from the inside out.
As a wife, mother and entrepreneur, Ali will take all of the help she can get when it comes to on-the-go snacks, which is where ALOHA bars come in.
“It’s very important in our family to be healthy, but we have an insane schedule,” Ali said. “It’s very busy. We’re running back and forth and we need to prioritize food and staying nutritious and staying full. An ALOHA bar has been in my bag for months just in case we need to grab something. It’s tasty, it’s delicious, it has real ingredients that you know.”
She added, “I’m real picky about what’s in my house, and ALOHA has always been there.”
