WASHINGTON — There are no secrets. As Josh Hart flies down the court, leading fast breaks like few can, defenders call out what he’s about to do.
Hart might be dribbling with his left hand. He might appear to anyone unfamiliar with his tendencies as if he’ll stay on the same side of the basket. But he knows he’s not fooling anyone.
“He’s going right!” Hart will hear.
No one around him is psychic. But they also weren’t born yesterday.
The move that follows is more than just Hart’s signature. It is his identity. These are two steps that make the difference between a hopeful layup that’s swatted into the stands and one that somehow finds its way through the net. He gathers the basketball with a backpedaling defender in front of him and steps through to the other side of the court, rising off the ground, cradling the rock now in his right palm and finishing through contact for a layup.
All five defenders understand Hart’s patented step-through is on the way. They scout it, yell it out in the moment and get to the correct spots on the court to stop it. But Hart finishes the finger roll, sometimes an old-fashioned three-point play, anyway.
“If you wanna stop me from doing that or keep me off the glass, that’s a game plan,” Hart told The Athletic as he got ready for Monday night’s bout against the Washington Wizards. “But at the end of the day, at some point, you’re gonna break, whether that’s the five-minute mark of the first quarter or the two-minute mark of the fourth quarter. I just know you’re gonna break at some point, and I’ll capitalize, just because that’s ingrained in me.”
On Monday, the rebuilding Wizards, prone to a flat tire here or a busted tailpipe there, broke early. Hart finished the evening with one of his career’s more impressive stat lines: 23 points, 15 rebounds, 10 assists and a couple of steals.
Heading into 2024, Hart had gone six-and-a-half years as a pro without a triple-double. Now, with the calendar year about to conclude, he has nine, his most recent coming during the 20-point shellacking of Washington, the Knicks’ eighth win in a row and their 18th in 22 games.
The Knicks, who are just half-game back of the Boston Celtics for second in the Eastern Conference, deploy elite talent at the top of their roster. Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are All-Star locks. Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby have shown up in conversations for defensive awards. All four of those guys have gone for 40 points at different moments this season.
And then, there’s Hart, the final starter to fill in the gaps, the one who gobbles up handfuls of rebounds like they’re Mike and Ikes — and who continues to try the same move around the basket, only for no one to figure it out.
“There’s a difference between knowing someone is gonna do something and stopping them,” Hart said.
A little more than two months ago, following the Knicks’ preseason finale, Hart sat in the same Washington locker room and professed a far more self-deprecating declaration. He was “lost,” he told reporters on hand, not fitting into the new roster, one that now included Bridges and Towns, who the Knicks traded for heading into the season. He had scored only two total points in four exhibitions. He suggested demoting himself from the starting lineup, that “we give somebody else a look and my role changes and comes off the bench.”
His friends had urged him not to stumble into that last part. As recently as this past spring, Hart had become a main character of a plucky playoff run that ended only one victory short of the conference finals. He had earned his spot in the first unit. He shouldn’t give that role away, buddies told him, no matter how discouraged he was about a quartet of games that didn’t even count toward the standings.
What has occurred since is why they advised him to keep at it.
Hart is having his best season. He’s averaging 14.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and 5.5 assists — the second-best scoring performance of his career along with the best rebounding and facilitating ones.
His efficiency is through the roof. Hart has always been reliable inside the arc. He’s always been a menace grabbing defensive rebounds and racing the other way for those layups, the ones when he attacks with a lefty dribble, then fights back to his right side for the finish. But he’s never completed those plays this often or with this success rate.
He leads fast breaks. At times, he appears as the Knicks’ point guard. New York will send Brunson, the usual leader of the offense, away from the ball, running him around screens to get him open as Hart initiates an action. In other moments, Hart looks more like a 6-4 guard cosplaying as a center, setting screens for Brunson, rolling to the hoop and playmaking from there. Monday against the Wizards, for example, he twice received the ball from Brunson on pick-and-rolls only to ricochet bounce passes off the floor, as if he were playing quarters, to a cutting Anunoby for dunks.
He’s hitting 39 percent of his 3s, a former weak point. That’s his best rate ever. He’s shooting 68 percent on 2-pointers, by far a career high and the top figure in the NBA among guards or wings by a long shot.
“He’s always been a good finisher (at the rim),” head coach Tom Thibodeau said. “And I think the way he attacks — he doesn’t really fade.”
Hart goes straight into contact, just as he does in all other elements of the game.
His 68 percent true-shooting percentage, an all-encompassing efficiency metric that takes into account the value of 2s, 3s and free throws, is fifth in the NBA. The four players ahead of him are all dunk-first centers. The five others in the top 10 are big men, too.
One player here is not like the others — though the strategy defenses take against Hart isn’t always so different from ones they would try against the 7-footers who surround him on that list. Because the Knicks deploy so many offensive weapons, because Towns is technically a center but shoots it like few guards can, teams will often place their rim-protectors on Hart. The matchup allows the opposition’s most intimidating insulator of the paint to roam around down low, leaving Hart open and banking on the worst shooter in the Knicks’ starting lineup missing jumpers.
It’s not the first time Hart has dealt with such a strategy. In the past, it has frustrated him. It’s another group of pros telling him through their actions that they believe it’s best for them if he shoots the basketball. But it also opens up lanes on the offensive boards, where Hart is deranged. He recently sealed a victory over the San Antonio Spurs with two offensive rebounds inside the final minute. Both plays included Hart laying out onto the court as if he were Ozzie Smith, then passing back out to the top of the key. He is more likely to crash the glass when he knows there isn’t a defender around him. And lately, he’s capitalizing on that dare to hoist up 3s, too.
He spent the summer perfecting his finishing around the hoop. Contact was not supposed to deter him. Once he hit whomever he was leaping into, he was supposed to continue to the basket with not just the same aggression but at the same angle.
The jump shot was more technical.
Hart has a tendency to fall away when rising for 3-pointers. He made a point during the offseason to pay attention to his shoulders. If they fell back, that signaled his balance was off kilter. He needed his momentum going toward the hoop.
He is yet to perfect the issue, but he is improved enough to call out hiccups in the moment. He shot 4 of 8 from deep Monday against the Wizards, though one of those misses came on a buzzer-beating half-court heave.
After the game, he lamented about how on his third 3-pointer, an off-the-dribble jumper that still went in, he drifted backwards too much. He believed his next long ball, a runner from 50 feet away that smacked off the backboard to conclude the first half, rejiggered him. In the third quarter, he fielded two dishes for catch-and-shoot 3s. He went straight up for both of them and after missing long on the first one swished in the second.
Once the league’s leading DJ, the king of the record scratch, when Hart would receive a pass and looked as if he were about to shoot an open 3 only to hesitate and think better of it, he is smooth now. He catches the basketball, and, if no one is around him, he goes straight up.
“He’s more confident than ever,” Towns said.
It shows. And now, a player best known for his lunacy on the glass, his thirst for loose balls and his unrelenting motor is a threat to score, too.
“It’s so funny the turnaround from him saying in the preseason he don’t know what the hell he’s doing to now,” Towns said. “He’s pretty much showing us what he can do. He has it figured out.”
(Photo: Jess Rapfogel/Getty Images)
