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Jordan Clarkson Supports Alex Eala at US Open
Jordan Clarkson has a new favorite in New York, and she doesn’t play basketball.
Days after crossing paths with rising tennis talent Alex Eala at the US Open and bonding over their shared Filipino roots, the New York Knicks guard grabbed his phone and joined the chorus from afar. No long caption. No polished statement. Just a raw, all-caps burst on X as Eala tore through her opening-round match.
“Alex Eala! Let’s goooooooo,” he posted after she dismantled Mary Stoiana, 6-1, 6-2, on Louis Armstrong Stadium.
It looked like a simple shoutout. It wasn’t.
Clarkson knows exactly what Eala is stepping into. He has worn the Philippine colors, felt the surge of expectation from a nation that treats every overseas success as a shared victory, and now lives in a city where every performance is amplified. His own basketball life has changed dramatically in the past year, and that experience gives his support a different kind of weight.
From Sixth Man star to Knicks role player
When Clarkson arrived in New York last summer, it wasn’t as the headlining scorer he once was in Utah.
The Jazz had bought out the final year of his deal, ending a six-season run in which he became one of the league’s most dangerous bench weapons. In Utah, he put up 17.5 points per game over those six years, logged 28.2 minutes a night, and walked away with the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award in 2020-21. Even in his final Jazz season, he averaged 16.2 points, 3.7 assists and 3.2 rebounds in 26.0 minutes.
That version of Clarkson lived with the ball in his hands and the greenest of lights.
New York asked for something else.
He signed for the veteran minimum and slid into a far more modest role on a deeper, championship-chasing roster. The numbers told the story: 8.6 points, 1.8 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 17.8 minutes across 72 games, with just a single start. Fewer shots. Fewer minutes. A smaller slice of the rotation on a team stacked with options.
He accepted it.
The reward? A ring.
The Knicks rode that depth all the way to an NBA title, and Clarkson’s willingness to trade volume for winning did not go unnoticed. Teammates trusted him. Fans gravitated to him. The franchise responded this summer by bringing him back on another one-year veteran-minimum deal worth $3.9 million.
For a former Sixth Man of the Year, this wasn’t a minor tweak. It was a complete recalibration of identity. Clarkson chose the grind of fitting in over the comfort of starring, and New York embraced him as a fan favorite who understood what it meant to sacrifice for something bigger.
A shared flag in Queens
That backdrop matters when you look at the way he’s watching Eala.
Their meeting during US Open week wasn’t just a photo opportunity. Clarkson spoke to her as someone who has already carried the same flag into hostile arenas and unfamiliar cities.
“When you got Filipino blood, you take the whole country with you,” he told her.
Eala is starting to feel that in real time.
Her dominant win over Stoiana unfolded in front of a heavily pro-Filipino crowd in Queens. Flags dotted Louis Armstrong Stadium. Every point she won felt louder than the scoreline suggested, every fist pump echoed by a pocket of fans who had turned a corner of New York into Manila for the afternoon.
Clarkson has slipped into that crowd, even when he’s not physically in the stands. His voice now travels through a different channel — social media, interviews, quick messages of support — but the sentiment is the same. He sees a young athlete at the beginning of a journey he knows all too well.
The contrast between them is stark. Eala is on the rise, her profile expanding beyond tennis as she pushes deeper into one of the sport’s marquee events. Clarkson is 34, past the phase of chasing scoring titles and individual accolades, reshaped into a veteran role player intent on squeezing another championship run out of a Knicks team that finally broke through.
Yet they are bound by the same thing: a country watching every step.
Clarkson has spent years feeling that responsibility with the Philippine national team, carrying the expectations of a basketball-obsessed nation every time he put on that jersey. Now, as Eala carves out her own space on one of tennis’ biggest stages in the same city where he plays, he has become one of the loudest voices cheering her forward.
His message to her — short, urgent, almost breathless — fits the moment and his own evolution. A former high-usage scorer who learned to thrive by doing less now urging a rising star to keep pushing, keep embracing the weight, keep going.
In New York, of all places, two careers at different points are moving under the same flag. One has already changed to chase a title. The other is just starting to find out how much can change when a nation starts to believe.
