Hart scored only three points vs. the Spurs, yet you could argue he was Game 1’s most impactful player
It hasn’t been an easy season for Josh Hart. He opened the season coming off of the bench for the New York Knicks. His role waxed and waned based on circumstance. It wasn’t easy on him. “There was moments I went home and I’m like, damn, am I ass?” Hart said before Game 1 of the NBA Finals. “Do I suck as a basketball player?”
The answer to that question was never yes, but in a way, the Knicks have often been defined by opponents treating Hart as if it was. Take Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Cleveland Cavaliers stuck their big men on Hart, refused to guard him, and took a 22-point lead, capitalizing on the greater rim presence that ignoring him allowed. That lead evaporated when Hart was benched for Landry Shamet in the fourth quarter. He had to watch from the sidelines as his former college roommate, Jalen Brunson, led New York to one of the greatest playoff wins in franchise history.
The San Antonio Spurs used the same basic strategy against Hart in the regular season. Victor Wembanyama was his primary defender when they faced off on March 1. Hart played 30 minutes, and the Knicks and Spurs played those minutes to a draw. In the 18 minutes he sat, the Knicks outscored the Spurs by 25 points. And with the Knicks and Spurs now facing off for a championship, finding where Hart fits was supposed to be one of the first great battlegrounds of the Finals. If Hart could make 3s, he could prevent the Spurs from parking Wembanyama in the lane. If he couldn’t, given the overwhelming impact Wembanyama has near the basket, New York might have to consider going back to Shamet.
Well, Hart didn’t make a single triple in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night. He made his lone field goal, a layup, roughly three minutes into the game. Yet you could argue Hart was the most impactful Knicks player in the entire game — a 105-95 Knicks win.
This time around, the Knicks drew dead when Hart sat, getting outscored by 12 points in the 21 minutes and 13 seconds he spent on the bench. It ultimately didn’t matter because they won the Hart minutes by 22 points. He finished the game with 15 rebounds, six assists and four steals. The only other player to do that in the NBA Finals? Larry Bird.
And that’s not even the appropriate comparison here. Entering Game 1 of the Finals, only one player in the past 20 years has had a game with 15 or more rebounds, four or more steals and three or fewer points. That player was, you guessed it, Josh Hart. He did so while playing for the New Orleans Pelicans in March of 2021. Now he did it again to steal home-court advantage in the NBA Finals.
It was, in that respect, perhaps the most Josh Hart possible game that Josh Hart could have had. For so long, his impact on games has been reduced to whether or not he’s making shots. But in the biggest game of his life, he won by doing everything except scoring.
He’s so vital to this Knicks team because he does everything else. The Shamet substitution at the end of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals made sense because Cleveland was an opponent that required only simple answers. All the Knicks needed to beat the Cavaliers was to put Brunson in a position to flambé James Harden over and over and over again for an entire quarter. The vastly superior Spurs require much, much more, and Hart gave it to them.
Hart has always been one of New York’s most reliable sources of transition offense, which is hard to come by against the ultra-athletic Spurs and critical considering what Wembanyama does to half-court offenses. Hart was everywhere defensively, guarding Stephon Castle on the ball and wreaking havoc off of it. He had a hand in all three of San Antonio’s vital fourth-quarter turnovers. He was New York’s most reliable play-finisher and, by far their best defender, pulling in one-third of their total defensive rebounds.
You could even argue his biggest play of the night came because of the “ignore Josh Hart” defensive strategy he’s been dealing with throughout his career. On New York’s final third-quarter possession, Brunson hit Shamet with a pass on the wing. San Antonio’s De’Aaron Fox called for Harrison Barnes to switch off Miles McBride and onto Shamet, but Devin Vassell, not wanting to risk a Shamet 3-pointer, abandons Hart in the corner. Shamet quickly passes it off to Hart, who has nothing but space in front of him. He drives, and Fox takes his eyes off of McBride, allowing him to race into the corner for the game-tying 3-pointer. Fox is just a split second late. Hart hits McBride for the biggest shot of the game to that point.
After falling down by 14 in the quarter, that shot ensured the Knicks would enter the fourth quarter with a blank slate. That’s usually all Brunson ever needs.
After the win, Hart credited his teammates for their resilience. “We just got a lot of tough guys, a lot of guys that don’t quit,” he said. He’s not wrong. He’s also one of the players who helped build that culture in New York.
Hart is toughness personified. He’s a 6-foot-5 wing who rebounds like he has wings, flying into the paint with little regard for his own safety to make the plays his team needs to win. Players have quit on teams for less than the inconsistent minutes Hart has had to deal with all year. But we’re talking about someone who openly volunteered to come off the bench last postseason. He’s every cliché about winning and sacrifice rolled up into a single player.
It makes his Game 1 performance that much more rewarding. A player who openly questioned himself because of his weakness in the highest-profile skill in his profession just led his team to its most important victory this millennium by doing a combination of other things literally only he has ever done among active NBA players. Not that he needed the validation, but Game 1 was somewhat emphatic proof of the Josh Hart concept. He does not, in fact, suck as a basketball player, as he himself pondered. He’s an enormously unconventional one, but as Game 1 of the Finals proved, even if he’s not making his shots, that’s all the Knicks really need him to be.
